


Option Three

by meanderingsoul



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Anal Play, Angry Sex, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Beach House, Cooking, Cuddling & Snuggling, Disturbing Themes, Drinking & Talking, F/M, Friendship/Love, Fruit, Gentleness, Grief/Mourning, Hope, Past Character Death, Past Relationship(s), Past Violence, Playful Sex, Sleepy Cuddles, Swimming, Terminal Illnesses, Vacation, mild body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-01
Updated: 2019-05-01
Packaged: 2020-01-20 17:18:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 34,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18529609
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/meanderingsoul/pseuds/meanderingsoul
Summary: Now she just stayed with him. That was it.





	Option Three

**Author's Note:**

> Writing this off and on over the last 10 months and finally finishing it has been a journey and I am very grateful to everyone who supported me in getting here. 
> 
> This fic means a lot to me, so please mind the tags, trust me, and I hope you enjoy the ride.

 

They stood and watched the pale blue waves until she couldn’t hear the thrum of the Zephyr anymore. It was gone.

They were gone. It was over.

The sun was heating her dark shirt quickly, even as the ocean breeze tugged at the hemline, the faint scent of brine. Island air. Phil’s fingers were warm in hers, the curves of his arm relaxed under her palm. This shirt of his was older, worn soft. Melinda could smell him on it.

Phil turned away from the water, caught her shoulders gently in his hands.

She closed her eyes and leant up into the soft kisses, barely moving, her hands light on his chest.

He pulled her closer, arms around her back. “I’m so glad you’re with me.”

“I love you,” she said, because it was a statement and an answer. She’d loved him when they were kids and loved him when they were partners. She’d loved him when their world ended, and she loved him right now and always would. It’d all just been a little, different this last year or so. Where else would she be?

Phil cradled her neck in his palm, pressed his cheek to hers. “I love you too. So much.”

It was so good to finally hear that in his voice, so fucking _good_ , something molten under her ribs.

Melinda twisted to kiss his prickly jaw, to catch the soft corner of his mouth.

They’d kissed since the Marauder ship. It was easy, already felt normal to kiss him goodnight. This time it wasn’t a gentle press of lips together. Phil’s teeth grazed gently over her lips before he slid his tongue inside against hers. She tipped her jaw to get him closer, sucked at the bow of his upper lip. Her palm smoothed up from his chest to rasp over the prickly-soft hair at the back of his neck.

Clever fingers popped the lowest button of her shirt open, trailed a fingertip over the skin underneath.

Melinda startled, leaned back to look up at him, his faint grin and the blank silver of his sunglasses. “Really? Outside?”

Phil shrugged, traced a hot little circle on her belly. “It’s a pretty private piece of beach.”

“It’s mid-morning.”

“So?”

Really? She was not having sex outside in the middle of the morning when anyone might walk by. She was not fucking him for the first time in the goddamned sand. Maybe later. Melinda had honestly forgotten how he’d never been that picky about _place_ ; it’d been so long since there’d been an occasion to notice.

“No.”

Melinda pulled away, trailed her hands down his arms, shamelessly squeezing light over the swell of his biceps, tugging him after her with her hands around his forearms before she turned her back.

She knew he’d follow, heard the scuff of sand when he came up even with her, slid his arm around her shoulders.

They went inside.

***

_May sat perfectly still and pretended it helped._

_Phil woke up all at once again, blinking hard and then he was there, all the gears turning in his head._

_He found her with his eyes in seconds. May could tell he knew she’d been crying, could see the grimace badly hidden._

_“I’m so sorry Melinda. I had to,” he said._

_That wasn’t it at all. He’d made the right choice and they both knew it. The right players in the right place at the right times, just like he’d always had a gift for. Daisy was alive and the world was in one piece. They had no way to contain Talbot, so they had no way to save him. It was over._

***

It was dim and warm inside, dusty shades still closed. The door latched behind them with a rough click.

She could hear him breathing just behind her.

Melinda didn’t turn around, but she leaned her head back enough to brush his shoulder again.

Phil’s hands slid heavily around her waist, turned her by the hips and pulled her close, belly to belly. Her eyes shut when he cradled her head before he kissed her.

Kissing like this was all-consuming, reverent and hot, his tongue stroking hers and his shoulders under her palms. There was nothing around her worth noticing but his arm on her back, his sun-warm shirt, the way she could feel him starting to thicken against her flank.

She shuddered when he sighed.

They set sunglasses aside, squirmed out of shoes. His hands back under her shirt. Her lips on his jaw. He kissed her cheek while his fingers opened her jeans.

Melinda gasped when he picked her up. He shouldn’t… But her back was against the hallway wall, his left arm under her and he was grinning at her with dark eyes. Her arm went around his shoulders on instinct, tugging them closer to get her mouth back on his, but his other hand slid into her pants, rubbed gently, and her forehead hit his shoulder instead when she first felt how she was already wet.

Phil made a low sound against her throat, crowded closer while a fingertip finally touched her bare sex.

“Phil…”

“Yeah?”

She nodded jerkily, pulled his mouth close enough to kiss again. He sank two fingers slowly inside her, slick stretch that made her eyes shut, felt it as he stroked her in a firm circle, immediately focusing on the spot that made her twitch. His tongue pushed roughly into her mouth.

Fuck. She was going to come in a couple of minutes.

“Oh, oh fuck this isn’t…” The rest of that sentence vanished. Something about how maybe she’d never thought when they finally had sex it’d be handjobs barely inside the unlocked front door of a beach house. That she’d thought for years that either one of them would snap at some point, have the kind of rough, quick fuck you didn’t discuss afterwards, or that he’d want the whole date-night kind of experience.  

But it was hard to remember words panting against his cheek. Phil only hummed at her, pressed as close to her as he could get without pinning his own hand, warm lips on her throat.

Eventually he tugged at the collar of her shirt with his teeth, teasingly said, “Unbutton it.”

She’d said something like that to him years ago, hadn’t she. Melinda unbuttoned her shirt with clumsy fingers, shrugged enough to let it slide to the floor.

He’d probably seen her boobs before, probably more than once, but there’d never been a time before where it was the right move to clutch at his throat while he nuzzled and kissed over the tops of them, to feel the breadth of him between her thighs, how easily he held her.

A light scrape of teeth, his mouth open wide on her skin and Melinda came hard and sudden, low whine in her mouth and both arms around his shoulders.

He let her slide to stand on shaky legs after a moment, arm tight around her back, hard against her belly. Melinda let her head list forward against his chest, rubbed her cheek against him, only opened her eyes when he _moaned_.

Phil was sucking her slick off his fingers. Oh.

Melinda shoved him back a bit by the hips, unbuttoned his pants, and walked away into the bedroom. Her knees only threatened to give out once.

She let her back hit the mattress and squirmed out of her bra and rumpled jeans, looked up in time to see him pantsless, shirt unbuttoned, thin pale undershirt not hiding much of anything, staring at her with his lip between his teeth.

She sat up to get her hands on him, hot and thick against her palm, same short grey fuzz as the trail on his belly. She’d seen him like this before, a couple times maybe, long ago, but Melinda was pretty sure she’d never touched him quite like this.

She almost jumped when Phil hissed and grabbed her arm, tugging her hand off him.

“Long time,” he said wryly.

She nodded. “I haven’t done this in…”

“About two years for you and me,” he said bluntly, not making her say it. “And at least 20 since we fooled around at all.”

He was standing between her knees. She felt it as a hand threaded into her hair to tip her head back enough for another deep kiss.

Phil grinned with his forehead pressed to hers, her fingers on his lips where they’d flushed. “This’ll be good.”

She crawled back to make room, but he didn’t lay down next to her or crawl over her. Phil knelt between her legs and pitched forward onto his elbows to put his mouth on her sex. She arched up off the mattress, breath catching in her throat. He kissed her just as thoroughly as he did her lips.

But she couldn’t take much of that right now, dragged him up over her by the shirt before she pulled it off over his head. His mouth was wet from her when she kissed him, his hands tangling in her hair, hers on his shoulders, still careful of center left of his back even now.

He leaned on her, not enough to be uncomfortable but not pretending she couldn’t take his weight either, enough to press her breasts against his chest, rub their skins, feel him breathing hard. When a restless shift of his hips rubbed his cock over his sex, Melinda planted her heels against the bed and thrust up against him.

Phil pulled back from kissing, watching her almost nose to nose, even when she tried to get his mouth back on hers. His lips were a darker pink than she was used to and Melinda felt a flicker of smug heat that it was because of her mouth, her teeth. His eyes were so blue like this, in sunlight, pupils just a little wide from endorphins, from the heat between them when he pushed her thighs apart, shifting his weight on his knees.

He kept staring into her face when he pushed inside.

She couldn’t keep her eyes open, skull shoved back into the bed while her mouth dropped open. She’d just come and she could still feel the stretch of him, every bit of it as he sank in deep, held there with a quiet groan.

It wasn’t long before he moved, thrusting the same unhurried firm way he’d fingered her. It was mostly instinct when she first ground back against it, but then she could think enough to remember how she liked to roll her hips getting fucked like this, to plant her right foot so she could stroke the back of his leg with her left.

He was right. This was good. It felt so good to hold him and hold him inside her, his arm tense under her hand and his shaky breaths against her temple.

She still asked, “This ok?” because it’d be easier on him if she rolled them, right? Rode him. Something told her he’d rather they stayed like this.

“Ah, do this all day,” he rasped through a gritted-teeth smile, flush on his cheeks.

It was kinda cute.

Melinda held herself up in a curl long enough to kiss him, ran a hand down along his back until she could clutch at his ass. He whined a bit, a fist catching around her hair, and it wasn’t much longer before his pace picked up, more of a stutter in his hips.

She felt the tense shudder when he came through the arm around his shoulder and the hand on his ass and the twitch of him in her belly.

Him moaning her name in relief against her throat through hot, open-mouthed kisses, arm sliding under her waist to hold her tighter, still buried inside her was enough to push her over again.

***

_“Daisy found the serum during the fight and took it. She was able to defeat him. She couldn’t talk Talbot down. We got Polly and Robin out safely.” Her voice sounded very far away somehow, like she was hearing it through a bad connection._

_She must sound terrible. The sympathy and resolution in his eyes was slowly being replaced by fear._

_“May? What’s wrong?”_

***

It took him longer than it should have to catch his breath, but that didn’t matter. Phil let himself sprawl out on his back, enjoy the fizzy heaviness in his limbs, the lingering ache in his belly. It’d been a while. More than a while.

May stayed close, her arm across his collar bones and a leg left limp over his.

Phil felt half-drunk just from all the contact, from her sweat-damp skin and heat and the weight of her against him. From the fact that May’s head was heavy on his shoulder and he could still almost taste her and everything they’d been through this last year or so, he’d never quite believed they’d make it to this.

He nuzzled her cheek and they fell back into lazy kisses for a while. “Better?” he asked. Phil certainly felt better right now.

Mel huffed at him without moving, but it was a _pretending to be cranky_ kind of sound and as familiar as his own voice at this point.

They needed to go to a market, preferably sooner than later. They closed early here. They’d brought dry goods and some clothes, but nothing fresh.

He’d also brought some recipes printed out and tucked in his bag. Phil was _so_ damn ready for some real food. They hadn’t had a decent dinner since that diner weeks ago.

There hadn’t been time to cook for May since… probably since he’d still been Director of something official.

The blankets were tangled under his leg, but he didn’t want to shift May to try and reach them. It was better not to twist his ribs too much anyways.

This was three times now. Three times his body had failed, his heart and lungs too worn down to continue on their own. Phil knew by now he’d always get a few good days and then a few rough ones after the deterioration had spiked on him again. This didn’t work like gangrene, didn’t work like normal wounds at all. He might make it through the next spike, he might not.

Far as Phil was concerned, he was off to a pretty good start at making the most of it.

He wound May’s dark hair through his fingers and she hummed low in her throat. “We should go get supplies, get something for dinner maybe?”

“No.”

Her eyes didn’t open, didn’t even flicker, dark lashes still against her cheeks. Wow, was she really the nap-after-or-else type? He’d never put that together.

“I’ve got one word for you,” Phil teased.

“Me too. No.”

“Mangos,” he said.

May had never had much of a sweet-tooth, even when she was young, before the training it took to make specialist shifted her tastes and metabolism. Most pastries she was fine ignoring. Chocolate was usually not of much interest. Heavy things like cheesecake were greeted mostly with suspicion.

But she’d literally eat fruit off the trees. Phil had no doubt if they were here long enough he’d see her up that coconut palm around the bend of the beach.

She’d told him to hold once in the jungle somewhere when they were younger and he’d thought she’d heard something, wanted to scout ahead, but no. She’d come back with _a fucking pineapple_ from who knows where, still wet from being yanked off the plant with help from a switchblade. And then she’d only shared a slice.

Mel made an interested noise… but didn’t move.

“Starfruit?”

All he heard was a quiet growl.

Phil rolled his eyes and settled more comfortably onto his back, enjoyed the soft heat of her breast against his ribs. She wasn’t going to move. Maybe they got the rest of their supplies in the morning. He knew a couple places they could probably get to for dinner.

There wasn’t any reason to hurry anymore. There was no place Phil would rather be.

There was a faint breeze coming in through the screen window. He could smell the clean salt in it, so different from the seaweed-heavy brackish waters he was more used to.

Phil still couldn’t believe they were _here_.

***

_Trying to get the words out dragged it all back, past the haze she’d fallen into sitting here with him while Simmons cried downstairs, while Daisy slept fitfully, while Mack was on the phone with the local national guard and Davis kept them in the air. It all came right back, sharp and inescapable like she was the one who’d been gutted._

_“Fitz. Fitz… he…”_

_She couldn’t say it, but she could see it in his eyes the moment Phil understood. “Oh God no.”_

***

Phil had _finally_ let her sleep for a bit. She woke up held to his side, fingers still playing with her hair.

Melinda tightened her arm around him, careful against his chest. She never forgot.

“Hey there.”

“Hey,” she said, but it came out warm and lazy and she hid her face in his ribs.

She might have dozed another few minutes, in that dark space he made, the one always there when she’d had to hide her face, but the sun was still high when they both finally got out of bed. She pulled on underwear and his shirt but nothing else, could feel Phil’s eyes linger. He found his bag where she’d left it, unpacked it only enough to grab a different one.

It didn’t take them long to sort supplies into cabinets, to open up windows and run fresh water through the faucets. They’d usually done this in safehouses, but a beach cabin was nicer. The silence was easy for now. Sex and a nap had made them both languid.

They’d settled on renting a tiny beach house, aging furniture and sugar sand out front and a glimpse of the other island. Sunsets over the water. Close enough to some vacationer spots they wouldn’t stand out. Quiet but not too far from the city.

They didn’t really have beach things yet, but old Shield swimwear from her cache would work for now. Rashguard tops, shorts or leggings. Short swim fins that were flexible enough around the ankle to run in if needed and strong enough to do it over broken glass.

Phil slathered sunscreen over his head and hands. Melinda tied up her hair and admired the trim outlines of his legs.

“You should wear leggings more.”

He snorted. “Not sure about that. Let me get your legs.”

She’d put on the shorts instead of leggings and he knelt to rub sunscreen over her bare shins, her claves, kissing her hipbone before his chin settled against her belly, an arm around her thighs while he looked up.

She stared. Familiar blue eyes and a familiar face, faint smile at one corner of his mouth, but the way he was looking at her…

Melinda kissed his forehead quick before she tugged away and stepped into the ocean, stood on the wet sand and let a wave break over her feet.

The water was bathwater-warm, silky. She closed her eyes to hear it shushing over the sand better.

When she opened them Phil was standing nearby, smiling faintly down at the water around his ankles. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

“Yup.”

They waded awhile, never so far apart they’d have to shout. Not much seemed to be living in the sandy shallows. Most of her life beaches had meant the American east coast, cold murky water and colorful tidepools, brown sand and wavy shore grasses. The sand here was white and studded with dark boulders. She found a few broken bits of coral, turned the pieces over in her hands before dropping them back into the water.

Phil waved her closer, water over his knees where he’d spotted a little shoal of silvery fish, swimming in aimless circles. He waved at someone going by in a kayak further out, small-town manners he’d never unlearned.

She took his outstretched hand while they waded back to shore.

They changed into dry things. She ended up in his boxers and one of his t-shirts again because it was the first things she grabbed.

There were plastic lounge chairs stacked near the house and she dragged them far enough into the surf to splash clean, to sprawl on with their feet in the water. They’d only brought so much clothing. There wasn’t any reason to coat clean things with sand when they didn’t have to.

But Melinda ended up perched next to him on his instead, leant forward with her hands on his arms to kiss, slow and warm and for no reason other than they could.

She pulled away when his hand crept up her shirt. “We’ll scare the tourists.” There weren’t any tourists, but he was not convincing her to have sex on the beach in broad daylight. Not yet anyways.

Phil scoffed. “You know you’re gorgeous. You can make anybody want you. You’d tie scores with Romanoff if you had ever _not_ spent your entire time undercover stomping your feet and going _I don’t wanna_.”

For that she scowled and stood up. Phil only grinned, shoving an arm under his head.

Melinda looked over herself. She was pale from too much time underground. Her knuckles were bruised, more marks hidden under Phil’s shirt. Only one from his mouth. The scarring on her thigh was bad, ragged and red and fresh. She’d split the nail of one big toe at some point, a bloody bruise underneath. But, her figure hadn’t really changed in 20 years, even with all that time spent in a desk job.

“Hmm. I’ve still got enough.”

The sound he made in his throat told her he was in full agreement. It also reminded her body just how _good_ the sex with him that morning had felt. That her belly still ached from it just a little. That his hands were big on her and his mouth was clever.

But she still backed away into the surf in his clothes, because May had never complained about going undercover once in her life.

***

_May sucked in a shaky breath. Her throat was tight. “We both went in for Polly and Mack. There were Marauders. We got them out. But. The building…”_

_Her face felt wet. Her boots blurred in front of her, the edge of the bedframe. She could make out Phil moving to cover his face with his hands in her peripheral._

_“Digging him out was too much. He bled out so fast I don’t think he even understood. There was nothing I could do,” and crying suddenly bent her double, had her burying her face into the thin mattress._

***

They went out for dinner early. Phil had a list in his head, places he wanted to see, things to do and where they were. All the different routes already memorized the way she knew he’d always done for missions.

She’d made arrangements earlier to rent a four-wheeler online, had paid a local young man online to drive it out to the beach house. It’d been waiting for them as agreed, parked neatly under a tree.

Melinda drove, Phil holding tight around her waist. She usually drove when it was small vehicles or huge ones and Phil drove when it was cars, like they’d always done. Everyone here drove too fast for the hills and tight turns, but she’d driven on worse under gunfire and so had he. This wasn’t that bad.

He nudged her with a warm knee to tell her when and where to turn.

The place was a plaza, food stalls and trucks, plastic tables. She could see the big marina down below, white ship masts and late yellow sun.

Phil held out a hand to her when she climbed off their ride, same silent request as before. She took it, twined her fingers with his, cool skin and strong little bones. Now that this kind of contact was an option again, that having hands on her didn’t make her have to fight not to break out into cold sweat, Melinda couldn’t get enough.

The small crowd was colorful and they didn’t blend in, not with their bunker-pallor and dark glasses, though Phil stood out less in his khakis and white shirt than she did in her dark jeans. They’d be able to fix that soon enough.

The air smelled sweet, though she could catch traces of hot chili and brine. Damnit she was so hungry. She leaned up to murmur to Phil, “All the food here was grown sometime this century.”

Phil actually laughed, turned towards her with that wide smile she’d used to see so much more often. “I know. It’s ridiculous how excited I am right now. We better just get something and then look around.”

They started simple, grilled shrimp on a stick, tacky with citrus juice, shared back and forth while they wandered.

The flavors filled her mouth, squished just right between her teeth. The last solid thing she’d eaten had been a ration bar, the stealth kind that was like eating lukewarm tofu nobody had even tried to cook.

Phil bought himself something with fish, cups of juice and something that looked like a dessert for them both in his slow but fluent French. Melinda kept looking, never going much further than 10 feet from him. There was steak for sale a stall over and that sounded good, but not quite what she wanted. As soon as she smelled the roasted pork her mouth watered. It smelled like Dad’s. The man working at the stall spoke enough Mandarin for her to order, crispy pork and rice and thick slices of pineapple with just a little char.

They found a little table backed in against a grimy retaining wall and sat, angled out to keep better watch because there was on vacation and then there was stupid. The crowd had grown while they’d wandered between stalls and the air was still hot.

Phil didn’t roll up his sleeves. Most of the people around them would probably assume the dark lines were tattoos at first glance, but she knew as well as he did that it wouldn’t hold up under scrutiny.

“Why’d you want to come here so bad? Before,” she asked. He’d never mentioned it to her before, but Fury must have known. She had days-worth of rambling in her head about trading cards and the entire history of surveillance technology from the dark ages onward, and not a single mention of this island.

Phil was still, staring out over the marina. “I almost came here once when we were new, just level two. I was brought in as back up for a negotiation, but it took place on a boat, well, on someone’s second-rate yacht. Never even touched the island. I told myself I’d come back, someday. It was raining and misty and one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen.”

Melinda took another bite, took a moment to count back, to picture the world then. Quieter and more distant and no less strange underneath. “You were 26? 27?”

“Yeah. Something like that.”

There was no guessing where she’d been. Specialists weren’t needed for those kinds of ops.

He tapped a finger against his fork, dinner half-eaten, cool pink of raw tuna on his plate. She snagged a piece of it with her chopsticks. He didn’t seem to notice.

“Is it different than the fake memories?”

Phil huffed. “ _Oh_ yeah. It’s nice to know how… flat the implanted memories really were.”

It had to be a relief. He’d stayed loose in the shoulders when she’d asked, his left hand resting against the table. She squeezed the fingers gently while he could see.

They didn’t rush over dinner. They didn’t have to. The crowd around them grew, chatter audible in four languages.

It still felt like she was forgetting to do something.

This was far from the first time they’d lingered over a meal, not the first time they’d enjoyed each other’s company mostly in silence. They people-watched, pointing out terrible vacation outfits to look at with tiny gestures, traded bites. It was familiar, comforting.

It _was_ the first time they didn’t pretend to fight over a stolen bite, didn’t scowl or make threatening gestures with forks. It was the first time she tangled a foot around his ankles under the table, snugged an arm around his waist when they stood to leave and felt him tuck his mouth into her sun-warmed hair.

They ducked into a corner store on the way back to where she’d parked, similar the world over, brightly colored and mostly empty, bought bags of taro chips and a can of the local beer.

They shared it while they walked and the evening tinged purple.

***

_She could hear the shuddering in Phil’s breathing, the catch that would turn into real crying soon enough. May couldn’t move._

_His hands wrapped around her shoulders, under, and he dragged her up onto the narrow medical bed with him. There wasn’t space for it. She was half on his legs and tubing was tangling into her collar._

_Her hands still fisted blindly around his shirt. “Every time. Every time there’s nothing for me to do but watch and you’re going to do it to me too!”_

_Phil’s free arm clutched her to him and he said nothing._

***

Phil brought the Haig out onto the beach in the dark. They had an actual night sky to look at here, somehow very different from looking out at space. And the moonlight on the water was amazing.

Scotch like this wasn’t meant to be drunk right out of the bottle on a tropical beach, but that’s what they needed to do with it so here they were, dressed in an inappropriate mix of underwear and shirts with their legs on the damp sand, surf at their toes.

This needed to be Haig, even if it wasn’t _their_ Haig, wasn’t the bottle they’d had to clean blood off of after they’d held onto it all through that mission.

They could switch to rum tomorrow. Phil had every intention of pouring it straight into a coconut through the eye at the first opportunity.

They hadn’t spoken since dinner. This was a wake and a promise and a toast to everywhere they’d come from, and also to burying the lie his first “visit” here had been.

May took another slow sip of the scotch, staring out at the dark water, the faint bobbing light of a boat. She’d had more of it than him. All her movements were getting too deliberate.

Phil knew drinking enough to actually get drunk was probably dangerous for him at this point. Better not to overdo it.

“You never told me.”

He grinned to himself. She’d almost slurred that e. “Told you what?”

“Told me what happened to the Haig.”

“Really? You wanna ask me that now?”

She waved the bottle his direction. “Yup.”

Phil took another drink. How long she’d been missing before he’d realized still kind of made him sick. “Radcliffe switched you. After we all came back through that gate.”

“Mm. Think AIDA clocked me in the head right when I got there.”

“I’m so sorry.”

May only shrugged. “Robots, right?”

“Well, brand new robot-you came back on schedule. Like everything was fine. And the last thing you and I had talked about was opening up that Haig.”

“So we did?”

“Well first we all took on Robbie’s uncle in L.A., but after. Yeah. We… I thought we sat down in the kitchen and opened the bottle, had a few glasses. Like I told you, it was supposed to be a fresh start for us. She said I’m right where I belong and I’m so sorry May I just had no idea.”

“She,” May said after a moment, something in her voice.

“Robot you. Sorry. In hindsight, there’s some things you said that stand out, times you were more insistent about certain details than maybe you otherwise would have been, but nothing that was red flag worthy at the time.”

“Fake-me was prying.”

“Not really. And I’ve never minded when you did. Just couldn’t always answer.”

May snorted quietly, took another drink.

“From what Daisy and Simmons said, the LMDs that came later _knew_ , had much more obvious programing. Much more goal-oriented. They knew what they were and why they were there. Robo-you had no idea until Billy handed her the Darkhold.”

“Where were we? With Billy.”

“I knew the Koenigs had an off-the-books storage facility for high-risk items but I didn’t know where it was. Long story short, we were there to retrieve and relocate the book. And… and robo-you and I were in an empty corner talking about vacations and we kissed.”

“She kissed you,” she said tonelessly.

Phil shook his head even though May wasn’t looking. “She asked me if I was ready for whatever came next and waited for me to make a move. I kissed her.”

He sat there with sand on his legs and finally let that sink in. I kissed _her_ , not I kissed _you_. It wasn’t like it’d been the first time they’d ever kissed, but it had meant something different. Had been meant to be something different. It was still a moment they’d both lost.

“It’s not fair and these probably aren’t the right words, but. The LMD, she felt more like someone made a copy of you. Maybe she was prying and I didn’t notice at the time, but it wasn’t like the ones you saw later. I know that’s not an excuse. And I’m not trying to…” Phil gave up. This was floundering and wasn’t even making sense to him anymore.

After another moment May handed him the bottle. “She blew up robot you. AIDA was going to use you to kill the girls. Your skillset, your memories. It could have killed them both.”

“Sounds about right,” he said. When Jemma had said _you_ so softly it had been nightmare material.

May stared out at the dark water a long moment, perfectly still. She finally shrugged and held her hand out for the bottle. “It’s everything I would have done.”

Phil took a long sip before he handed it over.

“Remember when we did normal agent things? Like steal intel and collect mysterious objects, sneak out of places we weren’t supposed to be?” she said eventually.

Shield had always been the oddball agency, but collecting possible alien artifacts before people could hurt themselves or others sounded like a very basic activity now. “It all sounds so calm after killer robots and time travel, doesn’t it?”

“Mmm.”

By the time it got late and they’d been staring at the water in silence a while, May was drunk.

He’d seen her drunker than this of course, though she’d never been someone who’d gotten drunk often, even when they were much younger. But, right now she was drowsy and her balance was off. She kept grinning at him.

Phil was a little dizzy. They’d drunk _a lot_ of the Haig. The bottle was lighter in his hand, his other hand holding onto her wrist to keep her arm around his shoulders while they made their way back inside. Slowly.

He set the bottle down on the kitchen counter. May tried to kiss him, but couldn’t stay steady up on her toes long enough apparently because her mouth settled hot on the underside of his jaw.

Phil kissed her cheek, got her arm back up around his neck. “Let’s rinse off, ok May?” Nothing like a cool-water shower in this kind of heat before sleeping. And they were covered in sand.

She made an approving noise when he stripped down, but getting her top off was more complicated than it should be, and she wasn’t helping. He finally just pulled it over her head. She shoved her shorts down after, but then forgot to step out of them.

It’d really be embarrassing for either of them to get injured because of a fall in the shower at this point. He was in space last week.

Phil hadn’t bothered to turn the lights on. The cool water felt good on his flushed face. Her eyes were closed, fingers clinging around the back of one of his arms to steady herself. She kept rubbing her cheek and the tip of her nose against the fuzz on his chest with a happy humming sound.

It was _adorable_. But she was also wriggly and he wasn’t quite sober himself and was really just trying to get all the sand off her thighs before they went to bed.

“I feel like this is what it’s like trying to wash a seal,” he said for some reason. He’d never thought about trying to wash a seal before, but it wasn’t really an inaccurate comparison just now, not with her smooth wet skin and dark eyes and the way she was lolling into his grasp.

May said nothing. Maybe she hadn’t heard him. That would really be for the best. Phil turned off the rain of water, got a towel around her and started drying himself thankfully without incident.

May froze tugging the towel up over her dripping hair, attempted to glower at him and only managed a betrayed pout. “Seals are _round_.”

He gave into the temptation and picked her up, knees and shoulders all curled up in his arms. It didn’t hurt a bit. Phil pressed a smacking kiss to her chest, felt her nosing at his hair. “Are you not?”

Mel made a disgusted sound, but laughed when he dropped her on the bed.

Phil pulled on boxers, offered her panties she eventually squirmed into. He kept having to remove her hands from him when she tried to _help_ him deal with the canula. She’d already _helpfully_ patted her hand over one of his eyes.

They slept topless under the thin sheet, the breeze through the window screens turning the ceiling fan in slow circles.

***

_They curled into each other’s dark little spaces to cry together, silently, shadowed ribs and muffled shoulders. Clinging tight. They’d done this before when things were bad. This time was just the worst._

_It didn’t last very long, never did. The room went quiet and still, not even beeping._

_“Melinda. I’m dying. This, second share of time I’ve had has run its course. We don’t have an option three and we never even found an option one that I could live with. We’re out of time. It’s done.”_

_“You should have told me.” If she’d had more time to look for answers…_

***

They woke up early, drank coffee and tea outside on the faded porch swing and watched the dawn come in pinks and oranges.  

She’d brought the teas and coffee with them, a battered French press. Other dry goods. Keeping milk around wasn’t going to be worth the trouble. Phil’d stirred in a spoonful of the sweetened-condensed kind like so many other warm places did.

Melinda sipped her tea and cradled his right hand in her lap and savored the quiet.

She drove them back into the city while the air was still cool and damp, before traffic got worse. She’d left her hair down to feel the wind, but the first intersection they had to wait Phil took the tie off her wrist and put it into a ponytail.

The first stop was for the local donuts, large chewy twists. Phil bought three and they split the third, pulling off pieces with their fingers while they walked.

Phil was the one who actually spoke French and she only knew phrases, so they stayed close. May was never going to pass up the chance to make someone else do all the goddamned talking.

That and letting him out of her line of sight almost made her shake.

Clothes were first because they were light. They needed swim gear that wasn’t Shield issue. Phil bought a fuck-ugly sun hat and she let him, floppy straw with a floral band, but he burned worse than she did. He found two pairs of swim shorts quickly, started looking at other things nearby.

Melinda bought several bikinis and a big, lacy shirt. Board shorts that weren’t Shield-issued black and a thin dress she could pull on over damp things. Blues and green and white. Leaves and geometric patterns Phil could probably tell her about. She wasn’t planning on wearing much else while they were here.

Stalls of food sprawled in colorful rows. Whole fish laid out over ice. Fruit and starchy vegetables and spices she didn’t have the first idea what to do with.

“I’ve pretty much got a list in my head of what I need for cooking. Work for you?”

Melinda nodded. She knew what she wanted too, and she could at least read prices. Bags of limes, mango and lychee got balanced under her left arm. There was a banana tree near the beach house. It was a start.

When she looped back to Phil between the stalls he had a bag of shrimp in his hand and a grimace on his face when he twisted towards her.

“Phil?”

“I’m fine, just thinking about…”

The little smile on his face was fake. Melinda grabbed a fistful of his shirt. “You don’t lie to me about this. Not _one word_.”

Phil’s mouth went tight. They’d always made a point of not making physical threats. It was too easy for it to go too wrong. “I’m dizzy. I need to sit down for a minute.”

“Ok,” she said and let go.

There wasn’t anywhere to sit down unoccupied. It was mid-morning now. The market was busy. She was able to get him leaning on a wall and propped against her shoulder, the bags in her arms. Phil breathed slow and careful behind her while they pretended to people watch.

After a while though he kissed her shoulder, made a damn thumbs up sign when she turned.

She held their things while he bought fish and yams and breadfruit before they left.

It had been stupid not to bring a cooler. They strapped the sturdier things to the shelf on the back, balanced the rest between them, wrapped in shirts to contain some of the chill.

She ran ahead when they got back to get the fish in the fridge while Phil pretended not to laugh.

***

_“I know. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I never…thought we’d end up like this.”_

_May wanted to hit him so bad her hands shook, but she didn’t know where the sore spots were anymore, didn’t dare risk it._

_There were too many what-ifs and all of them hurt._

***

They finally took advantage of the beach in all the right ways.

They got changed in the same room, backs turned out of habit. She only snuck one glance while he pulled on the grey swim shorts he’d bought. The pale blue bikini she’d picked was not high-impact, but it was what she wanted for snorkeling and lying around on the sand.

Melinda felt his eyes linger on her while she tied her hair up and grinned to herself.

The cache she’d picked up on their way here had contained in part two sets of Shield-issue swim gear, the 2004-era stuff at least, her size and something that would have worked well enough for either Phil or Barton. They’d already made use of that, but this felt better. Normal swimwear. Short fins, snorkels, and masks. The gloves and heavier diving gear they weren’t going to use.

Phil licked across the inside of his mask because he always did, no matter who told him Shield’s gear didn’t fog up and how disgusting that was. He only rolled his eyes at her grimace.

Melinda stepped out in the water up over her ankles, let it splash up along her legs.

Phil’s hand settled on the small of her back, cool fingers. “Good to head out?”

“Mmhm.” This was easy water and they were strong swimmers. And there was an emergency float in his shorts pocket.

They waded out until the ocean was up to her thighs before they really swam. The water stung on the fresh scars, but it was clean salt. She’d worry about it later.

The sandy bottom started to slope down, patches of coral starting to show up, little fish around them.

She’d never admit it in so many words, but Phil was usually the better swimmer between them, something about childhood swim meets and working as a lifeguard right up until Fury recruited him giving him an edge. Today she wasn’t surprised that he didn’t stretch into the strong freestyle stroke she was used to seeing. The twisting would be too hard on his chest. But his kicking was good, arms in a steady crawl that didn’t take his elbows past his shoulders, so she didn’t make them turn back when the water got deeper.

They didn’t go out much further, swimming diagonal to the curve of the shore, blue and quiet. Moments stood out. Fish around their feet. How it felt when she brushed against him, wet slick skin. Heads below the surface, almost hovering while they watched the blue outline of a distant little shark.

Phil gestured to hold and she twisted to swim towards him, but he only dove straight down, kicking steadily until he could grasp something from the bottom, searching for a clear space to kick off back to the surface.

He surfaced with a shuddery gasp, peered at whatever it was before he handed it to her, blowing the water clear of his snorkel and pulling his mask up.

Melinda looked at it under the surface. It was a shell, pinkish and pointed, a small chip on one little horn.

“Unoccupied. Thought it was, laying down there weird. We can hang onto it,” he said wheezing a little and rolling onto his back in the water to catch his breath.

Melinda floated on her belly next to him, holding onto his fingers loosely so they didn’t drift apart while she watched for fish.

The shell got tucked into one of his pockets before they swam back to the beach.

They laid out towels right onto the hot sand. After so long in the water, the heat sounded good. Phil flopped onto his back with a sigh, tank-top twisted up to show a strip of belly. Melinda laid stomach-down, untied the strap of her top and scrunched up the bikini bottoms.

When she settled her head onto her arms Phil was staring.

“Weren’t you the one complaining about how the beach wasn’t that private yesterday?” he asked.

She wasn’t _naked_ for fucks sake. “If I’m gonna take the time to lay out like this I don’t need to collect awkward tan lines.”

“And I don’t want a sunburn on my ass, but to each their own I guess.”

She shoved him over for that. He laughed, elbows covered in sand.

The breeze ruffled the thin fluff of hair on top of his head, the sides still buzzed too short to move.

Melinda remembered when he had a lot more hair, a darker sandy-brown and fine between her fingers. She remembered playing with it until he was asleep once when she was barely into her 20s and he’d been hurt. She remembered the stupid sideburns he’d had that one time and the godawful mustache.

The steely grey suited him though, suited the bones of his face and the lines at the corners of his eyes. They creased deeper with his smile.

***

_“I don’t want to die in front of them,” he said. “Not Jemma. Not Daisy. I can’t… I can’t have them watch this. I don’t want to die here, in a… hospital bed and metal walls. I don’t want any more of that.”_

_“Phil…”_

_“I have to…” and he choked on the words. “I need to pay my respects. I need to say goodbye. And then I’m leaving.”_

***

Phil had bought a cheap, waterproof camera when May wasn’t looking, when she’d turned her back to pick through a pile of tiny swimwear with a meaningful glance at him not to go far.

He was the only one who spoke French, but that wasn’t the reason why. May spoke four languages. She’d be fine. Whenever they split to look at different things she was orbiting him like a tail, like someone she’d been assigned to guard.

They both knew she was doing it. Phil wasn’t going to bring it up.

The photographs weren’t going to do him any good. He’d never see them blown up on a computer screen or printed in a frame. He wasn’t going to be reminiscing about this.

But May could keep them. Maybe someday, they’d be something that could make her happy. Fond memories.

There were other people, other places he’d always wished he’d had more pictures of. A little house in Wisconsin. A farm in the middle of nowhere. A dim stage. The battered corner of a city pub. The coast of Antarctica and a rail line through Africa. Other people even longer gone.

Right now Mel was trying to drink out of a coconut the size of her head. They’d finally gotten two holes put through it with a screwdriver and a rock, no hammer to be found.

For once Phil got the timing just right, caught that curious, bright-eyed stare when she looked up. May scowled at him seconds after. The camera went back in his pocket for another time.

Pouring rum into the coconut itself proved to be more trouble than it was worth unfortunately.

There was only one other thing he wanted to get while they were here, that he had to make happen next time they drove out for food, hoped it wasn’t already too late for him to... He’d only gotten glances before May came back to him in the market.

There were trays and trays of dark pearls, but Phil already knew what kind he wanted.

***

_“No,” she ground out._

_They could have saved him in the future. He could have saved himself with the serum, but she knows which pieces he put together in his head, why he didn’t take it._

_She was going to bury him. Again. He couldn’t leave._

_Being apart for his last days was more than she could possibly fucking take._

_“Come with me.”_

***

Melinda found them while unpacking clothes later in the afternoon. Under a pair of leggings, her hand hit something crinkly.

Phil noticed her pause and stare into her bag. “What is it?” he asked, folding a light overshirt into a dresser drawer.

She upended her little duffle bag over the bed and gave it a shake. That was a legitimate _pile_ of condoms, even worse than she’d initially thought. Bright colors, textured ones, even the stupid flavored ones.

They both just… stared at it for a moment.

“…you didn’t pack those,” Phil said.

“Nope. I’ll totally blame Elena though. Most everybody else would _never_ touch my bag, and if the other girls got reminded you have a dick you use they’re going to run screaming, not guess what size to buy.”

He grimaced like the thought made him nauseous. “You have such a way with phrasing things May.”

It wasn’t like they _needed_ them, but the others weren’t going to think of that. They didn’t know. She hadn’t done that procedure through Shield.

They dug through the pile anyway. It was already there, so why not?

Phil made an interested noise at the neon colors. Some of them probably vanished into his pockets. She shoved all the ribbed and studded ones off to the side. Melinda already knew those just annoyed her, but the one she spotted with a wavy, twisty texture got slid to the other side. That was new.

Phil was squinting at one of the packets. She knew his reading glasses were in the other room. “Vanilla bean? Seriously? Since when do they make that?”

She made a disgusted sound, started shoving all the fucking flavored ones back into her duffle. Out of sight out of mind would work for now.

He grinned. “Not fun?”

“They all taste disgusting. And smell weird. And if I’m gonna bother to do that I’d rather actually be touching it.”

Phil’s gaze fixed on her, wide blue eyes, and she caught the little shift when he bit down on the inside of his upper lip.

Oh that was _cute_.

Melinda shoved the rest of the stupid condoms back in her bag, walked slowly around the bed towards him and oh he was _definitely_ interested. “Something you want to ask me Phil?”

He swallowed when she trailed her fingertips up along his right arm. “Maybe. Sometime.”

“Not right now?” She was kind of offering to suck him here. That deep-blue, wide-eyed stare had convinced her to do way worse things.

His hands came up to her hips, held her close enough to feel his body heat in the warm room but not enough to touch. “When you feel like bothering sometime, let me know,” he said, with that calm little smirk she was really getting a taste for.

It didn’t take much to shove close enough to kiss. It didn’t take them long for their few clothes to hit the floor, for Phil’s back to hit the bed, but before she could pull him closer he was reaching for something.

A lime green condom apparently.

“Are you serious?”

He shrugged a shoulder. “They’re already here. And I’ve never had neon ones. Unless you’re, opposed?”

May only rolled her eyes and flopped onto her back to give him space. He wasn’t clumsy about it; she hadn’t thought he would be. In a moment Phil leaned up on his elbows and she rolled up to her knees to look.

It …really didn’t look right.

She wasn’t sure who started laughing first.

Bright lime green. Who the hell thought that was a good idea? Phil finally curled up on his side to wheeze, still giggling. She ended up wrapped around his back while he held her hand to his heart.

She was still shuddering with the last of it when he squirmed over to face her. Melinda shut her eyes with a grin. “I can’t even look at it.”

Phil kissed her quick and pulled away to turn her over by the hip. “Too late. I’ve gotta see this through now.”

She’d barely stopped laughing again when he pressed inside, back to front.

This felt right, felt like them, his grin against her back, one of her hands between her legs and the other over her mouth because she still couldn’t quite stop laughing.

***

_May scrubbed her sleeve over her face and leaned up enough to look at him._

_His cheeks were wet, the faintest attempt at a smile on his face when she met his eyes. “Just, come be with me. Please. I’ve got… I’ve got a little time. Let’s just let it be quiet. Let’s go somewhere nice.”_

***

They rode around the island most of the day, stopping to look at different views. Green peaks, coconut palms, craggy rocks near dark, pebbled beaches, the bright blue expanse of the Pacific.

She probably drove too fast, wind in their hair and aviators on, but if she crashed and got herself killed on a vacation pleasure-drive after everywhere she’d been and everything she’d done, she probably deserved it. Melinda would never be able to live it down anyways.

Phil kept kissing her neck, setting his cheek on her shoulder, arms tight around her waist while she drove. His hands rubbed over her hipbones and thighs when they waited at the occasional crossing.

They stopped a little higher up the island for Phil to take pictures. There was the entrance for a hiking trail behind them, but she turned away. He would if she asked, but they shouldn’t.

Melinda closed her eyes. The salt breeze was nice on her damp skin.

They stopped again after a while, on the smaller part of the land now. There were ragged rocks far out in the blue water, people surfing where the Pacific was deeper. The water looked harsh. She’d never enjoyed that kind of surfing.

This time she left him for a minute, ducked into the trees across the street. She’d seen a heavy flash of yellow, no fences or signs. It took moments to pick an armful of yellow-green starfruits. The ones on the ground said they wouldn’t be missed.

Phil was leaned against the four-wheeler when she came back, a little smile on his face. It was the kind that made her have to look away for a moment.

They sat on a railing to watch the surfers, someone going by in a boat, a larger ship further out. She cut them both slices of the fruit in silence, their hands wet from the tart juice.

For the first time in weeks her heart wasn’t racing.

***

_He held still while she watched him, not because she needed to think it over. She just needed a minute to let this sink in. To let it all be real even though she didn’t want it to be. They were done. It was over._

_“Where,” she said._

_Phil closed his eyes, fresh tears rolling down his face when that was all she asked. He shifted sideways, pulled her more onto the cot with him. They untangled the tubes, wiped their faces._

_After a while he snorted quietly. His hand had been absently rubbing along her back. “You know what would be really ironic?”_

***

Phil had been worried this would all be kinda boring for May.

He’d used to picture hiking out into the jungle, the boots and machete kind of hiking. Rock climbing. Night time scuba dives. Snorkeling. Being a beach bum was great, but he knew how to do all those other things, had planned to take advantage. The ocean here was so beautiful, and he didn’t mind jungle when no one was likely to shoot at him.

He’d never daydreamed about taking this particular trip with May, but for the most part she liked to do all the same stuff. May hated scuba diving at night though, always had. He still remembered how she shook after every dive in that seminar forever ago and wouldn’t let him hug her even once, even when they were out of sight of the instructors. He’d have skipped that for her no matter what.

He’d just always pictured being here alone. In most ways, this reality was better.

They’d rented a paddleboard to take out, but to go out further into the ocean they’d need to rent an actual rowboat or something. A powerboat seemed like too much hassle for more than an afternoon. But May would have to do all the rowing at this point and it wasn’t fair. He was losing the strength in his shoulders, got sharp pains when he had to press forwards with any force behind it, when he had to pull things down.

Some more serious snorkeling might still be doable. They could try some different places around the island, but they both knew at this point if his chest acted up he needed the oxygen not to pass out. Being way offshore on the other side of the island just sounded like asking for trouble.

It was limiting. He’d run out of anger at this whole situation long ago, but it was limiting. And May’d always been so active, even on her time off. If his chest wasn’t such an issue they’d have been all over the place, would probably have hopped islands in another few days.

But.

Phil might have really underestimated how tired they _both_ were.

He had to sleep more now to feel normal, but May was sleeping almost as much as _he_ was. She stretched in the mornings the way she always had when she was hurting, when she’d worked hard enough to wear herself down. Slow, with limited poses, much less rigor than her usual tai chi.

The scars on her thigh still looked so raw.

They both looked better already somehow, healthier. Stress and fear and all the crappy, freeze-dried, disaster-bunker food had them both looking gaunt. There were benefits to getting some sunshine after spending the last few months in a big metal can. Benefits to sleeping six or seven hours a night without interruption, fresh air drifting in the windows and your favorite person curled up in the bed with you.

There was the kind of tired you got to, where you had to start taking the edge off it to even feel tired again, and they’d both been at that point. Past it.

Then there was everything else after that, all the little things you started noticing when you hadn’t been able to really bathe for a while and suddenly could again. They’d been washing with a bucket in the future, too few tokens for anything else. The Lighthouse back in the ground had working showers, but the air was stale and dry inside. Now they had aloe lotion around for sunburn and rubbing a little into his shoulders had made him realize how fucking dry his legs were, that he itched, that he could actually make that _stop_.

May’d been way ahead of him on that, had bought coconut oil as soon as she’d spotted some in the market.

Besides his chest, he felt so much better, but any visual sign of improvement was basically a sham, papering over the cracks. His old freckles were all showing back up from the sun, his skin wasn’t itchy anymore, but the only flush to his face was from sunburn. Patches of his chest and back had gone numb. The bruises from Elena’s hands hadn’t healed, the cut on his wrist.

It was strange, to feel better and know he wasn’t actually _getting_ better.

He’d gotten more sun than he’d thought riding around earlier, still felt flushed though they’d been back an hour or so. It probably wasn’t a good idea to go right back out even if he _was_ healthy, so Phil’d set up a breadfruit to roast in the little oven for later. He could hear things moving in the other room. May’d been doing something for a while now.

Phil was on the couch with his eyes mostly closed, listening to the surf through the open door and pretending to think about reading the book on his lap. It was a battered copy of collected Sherlock Holmes stories, something he’d read before but not in years. Easy reading.

He didn’t want to start a book he might not finish.

May wandered back into the main room, her hair slicked to her head with something and held up by a plastic clip. The black bikini was still on from earlier. She’d left the wrap dress she’d bought untied, warm thighs and a flutter of purple.

Phil shifted to sit with one foot on the floor, made space for her. “Sit with me.”

“My hairs got stuff in it,” she said, poking through the little fridge for juice.

He made a face at her, because seriously? “I don’t care. Sit with me.”

She finally came over and squirmed gracefully onto the couch, settled onto her side against him. It was just them, so he only had a tank top on. Whatever was in her hair was slimy on his shoulder, but he really couldn’t care less.

He cradled her hands in his, rested the tangle of fingers against his stomach.

Phil started rubbing her hands, thumbs digging into her palms, pressing along every small finger. He knew which four had been broken. He’d reset some of these joints, had dislocated one once to maintain their cover. He remembered her in orange nail polish back when they were trainees, remembered countless bruised knuckles, her hands in bowls of ice.

She’d painted the nails white today, bright against her darkening tan. The scrapes were fading, skin softened from swimming and whatever she’d put in her hair. Smelled like coconut again.

Mel hummed softly, boneless between his thighs, smooth calves against his and soft puddled fabric.

This afternoon could have been years. There was nothing else he’d rather be doing.

It was a while before May shifted, pressed her lips to his cheek. “I’m gonna go rinse this out in the water. Swim before dinner?”

“Sure. Let me turn the oven down.”

They waded out hand in hand until Phil was deep enough to drift with the swells. May crashed shoulder first into a wave and went under, stayed, came up for air with her hair plastered to her face. The sun was deep gold against her wet cheeks.

“You look like a mermaid right now.”

She splashed him.

Phil made vanilla sauce for slabs of white fish, slices of breadfruit along with it.

They ate out on the porch steps to watch the sunset, balanced plates on their knees. The long bangs were back. Her hair was heavy and silky between his fingers.

***

_It was ironic. And probably a little twisted. But fucking off somewhere tropical with him for a while sounded… wonderful._

_No matter what, it couldn’t be worse than his last trip to Tahiti._

_“I’m not dealing with fancy resort people,” May said._

_“Oh God no. We can rent a little house on the beach somewhere.”_

***

It was weird realizing she was getting to know his body in new ways.

Not just because of the degeneration. Melinda had gotten familiar with that before they’d got here. It was other things. Touches and sounds.

Their line of work often hadn’t allowed for much privacy. The shear amount of times they’d had to get changed in the same cramped space. She’d listened over comms while he seduced a mark. They’d been undercover as spouses a handful of times. It was far from the first time he’d seen her in only underwear. She’d yanked his pants off to clean a stab wound once. There was really no counting the amount of times he’d undressed her for first aid. And sounds of pain could be very similar to pleasure sounds.

Then there was just the length of time. She’d known Phil decades. She’d seen him hard through his pants before. He’d walked in on her and Drew more than a few times. She’d seen him with hickies half-under his collar, knew how he walked when he’d just gotten some. They’d crashed together on the couch after late nights studying, shared a bed because of the cold or nightmares or simple lack of space. She knew the shape of him from years of sparring and swimming and a drunken piggy-back ride she pretended not to remember whenever it suited her.

So she’d already known how gentle his hands could be on her, but not that they shook when he was close to coming.

She’d known his moans went high-pitched when the pain was too bad to take for much longer, but not the low, gravely one from while he caught his breath after sex.

She hadn’t known how much he’d like the taste of her, or to play with her hair, or to kiss her hands.

Now she knew she liked the way he held her head in place when he kissed her deep, how he liked to rock against her while he got hard, the taste of clean sweat on his skin.

His arms quivered under her tight grasp, a stutter running through his hips just before he came, burying a thin moan against her shoulder.

Melinda scraped har nails lightly over his hair, wrapped her arms around his shoulders which turned into a started clutch when he pulled out to rub against her, still mostly hard and so wet and it nudged her into coming again. She could distantly feel the low sounds she was making in her chest, squeezing around nothing, slick and still open, arching up against his warm weight on her.

Phil lay down next to her, nuzzling her arm. For some reason she still felt overheated, breath still ragged, didn’t even realize how close she was to getting off again until her hips rolled against his in a needy squirm.

“How many times can you…” Phil asked drowsily, trailing off to gesture somewhere near her hips.

How many times could she come in a session? “No idea.” She’d never tried to find out. Melinda was usually fine getting off once, though twice was very nice and three wasn’t that far out of the ordinary. She knew she’d managed more than three a few times, but those nights were a bit of a blur by that point.

Phil turned them until they were spooning, her ass against his belly and his left hand sliding slowly down between her hips.

“You don’t have to…”

He kissed hot and wet along her throat, nosed at her jaw. “These fingers don’t get tired.”

She squirmed both into and away from his touch, a faint brush over her clit. “You can’t feel me.” Something about that seemed wrong, or unfair.

“I can lick you off them just as easy,” Phil almost growled with his mouth against her ear, sinking two fingers inside her with a slow twist.

It was probably barely a minute before she came again, his fingers inside her and the heel of his hand against her mound and his other hand kneading slowly at her breast.

She twisted to get her mouth on his, stifle the low moaning, leaned into his teeth on her lips. Phil’s hand shifted to cup her between her legs, warm and still while she came down from it a bit. But as soon as he felt her muscles start to relax, he started rubbing wide circles, soft and almost too much. His warmer fingers shifted from kneading to tugging along her nipples, squeezing the tips just hard enough to feel it.

It took longer. She started to shudder, one hand clutching tight at the wrist she couldn’t hurt, the other futilely trying to cling to his hair. Phil was less sleepy now, shoved a knee between her legs and planted his foot against the bed to keep them open for his touch. She could feel it coming on this time, gasped for air as something in her belly started to seize. Phil crooned some soft sound at her, sucked hotly at her neck with a scrape of teeth and she came with a guttural cry that startled her.

Distantly, she felt Phil kiss her cheek, mutter _four_ with self-satisfied pleasure.

Melinda lost track, wasn’t sure if the next wave of pleasure when his fingers curled inside her was something new or a continuation of the last. His arm around her shoulders was holding her still more than petting her. She might by cursing but couldn’t focus on the sounds. His fingers _didn’t_ get tired, curled deep just how she liked it and thumb never losing rhythm on her clit. Phil rubbed his cheek against her hair and caught her open mouth for kisses and she finally had to shove his hands away after what could have been the fifth or the eighth or some other horribly ridiculous number and she couldn’t take it anymore.

He helped her flop onto her back, knee still over his and almost sobbing for air. Phil kissed along her arm and across her chest, caught her mouth with a content hum.

She just tried to catch her breath.

Phil _did_ suck the fingers of his prosthetic into his mouth, lying next to her with his eyes closed, either ignoring her watching him or genuinely unaware. Blissful.

It shouldn’t have been as sexy as it was.

It was getting dark before she could get her legs under her enough to stumble into the little shower. Phil kept his arm around her waist, wrapped hers around his neck after he set the water warm. Soapy hands smoothed over her back and ass and between her thighs. He kept kissing her, smiling into it even though she could barely keep her head off his shoulder.

She shouldn’t lean on him so heavy. They had to be careful, but Phil was still sturdy against the earth.

Melinda couldn’t seem to come up out of that quiet, spent space. Dinner was almost silent, side by side on the couch while Dune played on the tablet, moon glinting on the water outside.

In bed she clung along his side. Phil turned his head and murmured a heartfelt _thank you_ into her hair.

She wasn’t quite sure she understood what for.

***

_Now there were plans to make, a task to focus on, and it was enough of a lifeline for now. They needed supplies, to retrieve whatever funds they could still access. It’d be enough. Phil was good at hiding money._

_He only poked her when she said it. Old wounds felt far away right now._

_If May only thought about this moment and no further ahead or behind, it was almost happy._

***

They actually went parasailing.

They went down to the marina on a whim, hired someone take them out one afternoon. The breeze was right for it today, steady and warm off the ocean.

They didn’t stand out anymore. She’d always tanned quickly and Phil’s visible freckles and burnt cheeks hid the greyish tinge creeping up his neck. He was wearing the old Shield gear top, but it just looked like any other black rashguard, tight to his wrists. It hid the dark lines. His swim shorts were blue with bright red flowers. Of course they were. It didn’t stand out. The creeping lines weren’t past his knees yet.

She’d cut the sleeves off an old, grey t-shirt from the cache she’d picked up, black bikini top and shorts. All her scars showed more when she’d had some sun, silvery white, but the only thing that would really stand out to civilians was her leg, still red and fresh. But she’d had to sell the ‘car accident’ excuse before.

Phil left his arm around her waist while he talked a little with the boatman, hand resting over her hip. He kissed her forehead while no one was looking and she poked his sunburned knees.

They looked like anybody else on vacation right now. It was nice.

The sail was yellow, already billowing a bit while they strapped in, pretending to follow along with instructions as if they both weren’t trained to skydive, to jump off cliffs into rough water.

She’d always loved that first weightless moment, from her first time on a rollercoaster to her first flight. When the sail caught and her feet left the boat she felt that same lurch of joy in her chest.

The water was clear like glass, bright blue fading to white at the horizon line the way she usually only saw from her plane. The wind was loud, but Phil looked away from the mountains long enough to grin at her.

Melinda stared out, let everything fade but the wide-open, round world.

Phil tapped her leg with his foot and pointed. There were dolphins further out from the shore, glossy grey and splashing tails. One even jumped.

She tried to memorize it, the water and the warm salt air and the smile on his face. Her hand on his thigh. A perfect moment.

***

_Phil would start looking, maybe make some calls in the morning, find them a place to stay. They needed a kitchen and a bed and not much else._

_Here they needed to reevaluate the Lighthouse, relocate Robin and Polly, improve their medical supply stock while they had the chance, while the military was distracted with Chicago and New York._

_But not tonight._

_There was a cache of hers May could get to from here, aquatic gear and cash. The weapons in it would be left behind on the Zephyr. They weren’t going to need them._

***

Phil couldn’t quite catch his breath.

It’d gotten worse as they day went on. He could take a deep breath, if he made himself, but it _hurt_ and didn’t seem to actually make him feel any better. His chest ached the way frostbite did somehow and the hot sun didn’t seem to touch it.

May hadn’t noticed he was worse today, not yet. He wasn’t lying, he’d promised her. Phil just, didn’t want to tell her. He already knew the drugs they had wouldn’t even touch the pain, so what was the point.

It would either get worse or better or it wouldn’t. There was no real management plan for interdimensional necrosis.

He’d woken up to shorebird sounds and she was on the floor next to the bed, back curled as she stretched her legs, topless and her hair still rumpled and her eyes mostly closed.

Phil stayed still and quiet, breathing slow, savoring it. Getting to just watch her _be_.

They’d lingered over breakfast, fruit and coconut bread he kind of wanted a recipe for, her feet around one of his while she sipped her tea in content silence. He just had to swallow carefully around the intermittent weirdness in his throat.

It was windier today. There was still a list in his head of everything they could do on this island, everything he was still probably capable of doing. Mountain climbing and inland jungle were off that list, but there were still other things.

“Want to go see a blowhole?” Phil tried not to grin too obviously when she froze, slice of pineapple in her hand.

“What?”

“There’s like a lava tube thing, not a long drive. It sprays water out of the side of a cliff on days like this. We could go see it?”

May glared at him for the joke but said, “Sure.”

He missed Lola, languishing in a government warehouse far away, but riding around like this was nice. The last time he’d been on a 4-wheeler with May he’d been holding a rifle. He definitely hadn’t been watching the jewel-green mountains to the right of them here, hadn’t been holding onto her waist with just an old t-shirt between them.

Mel’s ponytail whipped him under the chin, but he didn’t care.

She was able to find a patch of gravel pretty close to the spot, which was probably a really good thing. His vision greyed out standing up, but it came back in a moment. Maybe they should have brought the smaller oxygen machine. For now he just had to move carefully.

There was a path along the coast, black rocks and moss on one side. May hooked her elbow through his, rubbed her hand along his arm. He hadn’t realized how much he’d like that. She’d always set her hands on his shoulders, usually through jackets and gloves. This was different, the faint squeeze of her fingers.

There were a few other people watching. Phil smiled, said hi, more pleasant to play normal tourist when it was mostly true.

It wasn’t quite the gush of water he’d imagined, but you could definitely hear it, see the spray on the pavement. He finally convinced May to go ahead and dart across the road, hold her hands up to the gap in the rock and feel it.

They didn’t walk straight back to where they’d parked, wandered a bit. It was a nice day. The waves were bigger here, the water a deeper blue. May had wrapped her arm around his again and he kind of didn’t want it to end.

But he felt a little dizzy now. Damn.

“Good to head back?” he asked.

“Sure.” May looked worried, but she didn’t say anything.

He leaned his head against her shoulder part of the drive, looking down over the city this time.

Phil shut the bathroom door when they got back, drank as much water as he could get down in small sips when his brain still wanted to gulp it. He closed his eyes, set his hand against his chest.

The skin was too cool, too slick but it wasn’t wet. He could feel his heart beating in his chest but he couldn’t feel it under his palm.

This part of it all was better not to think about.

Phil dozed off on the couch without meaning to, woke up after almost an hour with the canula in place. She’d moved the equipment and somehow gotten the thing around his head without waking him.

“Better?”

Melinda was sitting on the porch, just the right spot to see him through the screen door and watch the ocean.

“Yeah.”

When he kissed the top of her head he murmured _thank you_ into her hair.

They dragged a lounge chair a little into the surf later, angled where the palm tree’s blob of shade would cover him for a while. May didn’t bother to bring one, perched on the edge of his and leaned over him on her elbows to kiss.

Kissing her was wonderful. It was just wonderful, holding her so close, feeling her smile and little sounds instead of just seeing them, having her in his arms without blood or tears involved. Finally having someplace to pour everything, every missed opportunity to be gentler, how happy she’d always made him, how grateful he was for this.

She finally stood and stretched, swishing a foot through the warm water.

Sunshine suited May, always had, and she liked the beach. But Phil knew her favorite season was and always had been winter. He’d always been the one who liked summer best, but he was hiding in the shade for a reason. Summer only liked him in small doses and May wouldn’t kiss him if he had the straw hat on.

“I’m gonna go get some of those,” she said, pointing up at the green coconuts to their left.

This was only a matter of time. He’d known that. “You’re going to climb that barefoot?”

“Yup,” she said

“Do I get to try and catch you if you slip?”

“Nope.”

He sat up while she checked her pocket for her knife, tied up her hair, watched as she took several quick steps towards the trunk and jumped the first few feet up.

Sometimes he… forgot.

Phil wouldn’t have thought he could, but sometimes he forgot he was dying, that it was happening slower this time, but it was happening.

It didn’t really make him angry when he forgot and remembered again. Even when Robbie had explained the Rider’s deal, it’d been more of a resigned grief. His second lease on life wasn’t going to be quite as long as he’d hoped. He was going to miss some things he’d hoped to live to see, lose some chances he’d thought there was still time for. But their backs had been against more than one wall and that was just how it had to be.

It was still strange. Knowing.

Phil stood so he didn’t have to wrench his neck backwards. May looked smaller at the top of the tree, legs wrapped around it while she reached towards the first green blob of a coconut.

He’d used to hope for quick, to go out with a bang, to do some good, to not know what hit him. That was when he’d thought about it at all, and at first that hadn’t been very often.

His first death hadn’t been that quick.

This time wasn’t really either, but honestly if he dropped dead right here and now, on the warm sugar sand under a palm tree, half-asleep after kissing May til their mouths were sore - there really wasn’t going to be a much better way to go.

Last time he’d been so cold.

Three coconuts hit the sand before she started back down, finally letting go and landing in a deep crouch, flicking her hair back over her shoulder with satisfaction.

This was a much better end for him. But, none of this was fair to May. Very little of May’s life had been fair to May.

Phil laid back down right on the sand, listened to the water and the thunks of coconuts being left on their porch. She sat down close enough he could brush her thigh with his fingers, one of the coconuts held still between her feet while she cut a hole big enough to drink.

He watched her hide a startle when it splashed her, drink deep and then stare out at the ocean with a quiet sigh.

The only thing that really still hurt about any of this was that he was going to leave her here alone.

Phil had never left her and not come back before.

***

_They talked until he fell asleep again. She stayed._

_Daisy was asleep by now. Robin still had her mother. There was nothing she could do for Simmons and she’d never be able to keep it together long enough to apologize yet._

_May held very still and let the grief wash over her, let it soak into her bones and settle, just another layer._

_Fitz was gone. Talbot was dead. Mack was contacting Carla Talbot. She had no leads left to help Coulson, nowhere to even start._

_It was over. But. She’d tried._

***

They mostly didn’t talk about it. They’d done that already. She knew not to attempt to resuscitate. He knew if he was unconscious a full day she was calling a hospital. Her trainees had thought to put up a plaque for him and she hadn’t been able to look at it. He’d said his goodbyes to the others and she hadn’t been able to watch, hadn’t even tried.

She’d see them again. Someday. Most of them at least. He wouldn’t.

It was the little things that reminded them what this trip really was, that however long it lasted it was going to be their one and only, that unless someone else had some breakthrough or some miracle occurred he was never going to leave here.

Surgery wasn’t an option anymore, if it ever had been. The degeneration was too extensive now and they both knew it, spreading out far past the original wound. It was like the darkened tissue was just _waiting_ for the rest of him, cooler to the touch, but giving no other real signs the tissue was dead.

It was unnatural. They’d both seen wounds go bad before. This wasn’t that.

But now that he wasn’t fighting it so hard, wasn’t hiding it from her, getting back on his feet through shear force of will, the degeneration was obvious.

Melinda could see how he moved differently on his feet, careful not to jar himself when they hit the ground. He avoided twisting or bending at the waist, avoided having to squeeze with his chest muscles. Sometimes the grip strength in his right hand was off, too slow or too weak.

It still curled her fingers into fists seeing it, but that fight was over. All of it. They’d both won and lost.

She’d been helping Phil slice coconut meat for later when he frowned down at his prosthetic hand.

“Unless you want to hang onto it, destroy this please. I don’t want anything else of me sitting around in a box.”

It was somehow the most morbid part of this. Not setting up the DNR, none of the other arrangements they’d made. This was what almost made her gag, casual plans for what to with _his hand_ when he didn’t need it anymore.

Melinda swallowed hard again against the nausea. If she kept thinking about it like that she really was going to throw up.

She took a deep breath and said, “What if it was a nice box? Like a cigar box?”

Phil froze before laughing, eventually having to set down the knife and lean on the counter.

“I’ll make an exception if you can figure out a set-up like Thing. Jesus May, how’d you even think of that?”

Melinda only shrugged.

When he started humming the theme song out of tune a minute later she shoved him with her hip.

***

_Even with her head on Phil’s shoulder, something she hadn’t done in years and years, May couldn’t sleep long. There was too much heavy in her skull, too much buzzing in her chest. And she knew the agent she’d trained would be just the same._

_The plane was quiet. They were probably back at the Lighthouse, but Daisy had dragged a heavy bag into the cargo space. She’d obviously given up on the trouble of getting it hung. May spotted a frustrated kick on her way in._

_“Want a hand with that?”_

_Daisy kicked the bag harder. “Nope.”_

_“How’re you holding up?” May knew the answer, but Daisy usually needed the invitation._

_“Well May, I used my dead mother’s healing factor to murder Talbot after he tried to eat me alive, and I was only able to do that because Coulson tricked me twice and then I took the only thing that could save him anyway. And then Fitz died for no fucking reason at all. So, you know, I’m doing great.”_

***

It rained.

It rolled in grey over the water, poured down in heavy fat drops, chill in the steamy air.

Melinda darted out the door to stand in it, to let it run over her hair, soak into the thin dress she’d pulled on today, the wet sand under her feet still hot.

Phil stood quietly with his shoulder leaned against the porch frame, right hand held out to feel the raindrops.

They sat out on the porch swing, swaying a little with the breeze. She sat tucked into his shoulder, warm from him and one of his shirts, hair still damp. He read and she played Tetris on her phone, permanently left in air-plane mode.

He had actually tossed his into the surf that first day, but had swum out to get it after only a minute. Leaving their garbage somewhere this beautiful had seemed wrong he’d said, however cathartic.

Hazy clouds blurred the tops of the other islands she could see, softened the edges of craggy wet rocks. The clear water turned a steely blue. It was like the island was just floating in a dim, quiet bubble.

“Is this what it looked like last time?” she asked.

“Mmhm,” he hummed, staring out over the water with a faint smile.

“I get why you had to see it again.”

***

_“But you know what the worst part is?” Kick. “I can’t even cry.” Kick. “I can’t even be sad the right way. I held Simmons while she… and I had nothing because I’d already lost him. Everything we’d been to each other was already ruined and now there’s just…”_

_Now there was no hope. There was only a body. There was never going to be a chance for them to hash it out, to call it quits or try to make things right. It ended bad and ugly and it had just ended and none of it was right._

_“None of us left things with him the way we wanted to. Including Fitz,” May said gently. She knew Daisy heard her, understood, the words and everything behind them._

_The floor rumbled, faint like distant thunder. Daisy kicked the bag hard enough to roll it, brought both fists down again before she went still._

_It was the wrong time to try to hold her, but May stayed in the room._

***

It was strange, catching up like this.

They hadn’t been apart for some time now, but they hadn’t really been talking. They’d been apart and angry, apart and lonely, apart and worried. There were plenty of times before when he’d gone weeks or even months without speaking to May and not given it a second though.

The idea of that felt impossible to live with now. It had for a while.

It was the little things, stories there hadn’t been time to share when they’d happened, things they’d seen. Something her dad had cooked when she’d been staying with him. How weird it had been to stand in the football field his dad had used to carry him around on his shoulders. All the strange lightning she’d seen in the last few months, red sprites and other stuff. May knew all the terms.

After days alone together they were still finding things.

May had bought or acquired a paddleboard from somewhere before they got here and they finally took it out, taking turns kicking until the pull of the coastline eased, the waves turned to swells.

Phil sat and kept an eye on the compass and the shoreline while May rowed and they just, talked.

The spit of reef they were going for wasn’t too far, and with the paddle board they could stay so much longer. At the first sign of fish they both hit the water. There were more here, yellows and blues, pink and white coral mounded underwater like shrubs.

He dove down for an abandoned shell again, about a dozen feet of clear water pressing down, black around his vision even though his legs worked about the same as they had last year. He only dove twice, sat on the paddleboard to catch his breath while May circled like a cliché shark.

He pointed the next thing he spotted in the sand out to her and let her dive instead.

Phil was sprawled across the board, May leaning on it with her legs in the water while he finally told her about that time Clint saw a puppy and tripped down the stairs, undercover in Kansas City. Shield gossip had still been a concern at that point. Phil had been energetically sworn to secrecy.

“Barton would kill you for telling me that,” May said, but she was grinning.

Yeah. He’d have pitched a fit. Phil sighed. “I miss them.”

There weren’t very many ops they’d run as a group of four, but when they weren’t awful they’d been a ton of fun. It wasn’t that they’d drifted apart. But, life had happened.

May nodded, leaned her head on her arms and stared out to sea.

They didn’t talk about the team they’d built very much. He’d said what he had to. Phil wasn’t going to make her carry other words back.

He wasn’t going to really get to be there for Mack. He’d never know it when Simmons found their frozen Fitz. He wouldn’t be there for Elena when she hit all the rough patches of getting used to new limbs. If Daisy ever got married he wouldn’t see it.

Phil rolled back into the water. They’d drifted a bit further out, deeper blue. He watched something in the distance that might have been a reef shark until he got dizzy.

May had climbed up, turned the board towards shore. They should head in.

He sat quietly for a while. “Do you remember when we stopped at that half-empty mall and taught Daisy how to ice skate?”

May smiled softly, facemask on her head. “Yup.”

Phil trailed a hand in the water until she growled at him for making drag, tried to shrug off his quiet mood. “Do we know any crew songs?”

She only shoved the paddle in his direction. “Your turn.”

Phil rolled into the water to kick instead.

He’d noticed it while they’d headed back to shore.

The darker tan made her scars show. She’d always healed well, but specialists took damage. A lot. Phil could pick out past knife wounds along her arms, the gunshot grazes on her side and her bicep, two visible places where she’d split her scalp. There were little scars from gravel on one of her shins. A handful of shrapnel scars.

But right now she was belly down in the sand, a beach towel bunched up under her chest and her head pillowed on her arms. Sound asleep.

Phil was so careful to scrub the sand off his hand, checking his palm against his own throat before he put it to her bare back. Soft skin, sun-warm, dry from the salt water. Phil smoothed his palm up and down, just firm enough not to itch.  

Mel made a content little sound, a little croon in her throat, still fast asleep, happy with his touch.

He cried for a minute. While it couldn’t hurt her, while she wouldn’t see and want to plead with him for things he wasn’t willing to give.

Phil wanted more time, oh God he wanted more time with this, but not for the price.

***

_They picked up the bag. Daisy let May walk her through stretching out her wrists and ankles. She knew how. May had taught her years ago. She didn’t need the help, need May’s voice or hands, but that wasn’t the point of these things._

_She wasn’t the same girl May had taken into her plane against her will years ago. It wasn’t that she’d grown. Daisy’s hands were bigger than hers and always had been. May had never quite noticed before._

_“I need to tell you something. I want you to hear it first.”_

_Daisy already seemed to know. “May…”_

_“We’re going. Soon as we can. Phil wants to be somewhere quiet and I’m going to go with him.”_

_Daisy’s blank expression final crumbled, her eyes glossy with tears as she shook her head._

_Now it was the time, to reach out with hands that didn’t shake and pull the girl into her arms, set her chin on Daisy’s strong shoulder while it quivered._

_“I was screaming at him to go back and take it and he already knew. He’d already… It can’t all end like this,” Daisy choked out._

_“It’s not going to end in a way I can live with. But it doesn’t matter that I can’t live with it. I have to. We have to. Phil made his choice and you’re still alive so I can’t even say it was wrong. He’ll never think it was wrong.” May could hate every single decision that had led to this, but the serum had gone where it needed to be._

_They held each other there a long time, until May’s shirt was wet and the base started to wake up around them._

***

They walked around that bend of the island on a whim, just far enough to get the frozen kind of cocktails. He’d spotted a place when she drove them by here the other day. As long as they stayed in the surf they didn’t seem to be intruding on anyone. And the frilly, frozen drinks made it feel more like a real vacation somehow.

Melinda’s dress tugged around her knees, wet along the hem on one side.

Phil got them margheritas then mai-tais and they shared a few tapas in a shady corner. It made it feel less like a dream, to see other people around, the bartender and someone who came in for a tray of pina coladas, to hear a radio playing from the next building over.

She had a couple more after Phil switched to juice, had just enough to drink to let him swing their hands between them walking back, to let Phil ramble mostly to himself.

He went quiet eventually, stroking her scarred wrist with his thumb. “I feel like I should remember when this changed, when we changed. Like there was a moment somewhere and I didn’t recognize it.”

“I remember.”

“You do? Really?” He sounded startled.

“Wasn’t anything dramatic.”

“Tell me?”

A larger wave tugged at their legs again and he moved to walk closer to her, sunlight heavy and orange, starting to dim.

“I missed you. We lost…” Too many people. “Then Shield went legitimate for a while. You were gone so much, and I missed you. I wanted you with me, like we used to be. And then I kept wanting.”

She could feel him looking at her, but he didn’t say anything. She finally shrugged.

They walked slow.

“I still remember the Framework life, what I was doing in there when I should have met you,” he said.

“Me too.”

“It doesn’t weigh on you,” Phil said. It wasn’t a question.

“Only Mace weighs on me.” She could remember her Framework life clearly, but it wasn’t real. She could put it away in her head. But, there were too many very real what-ifs to carry with the way that Mace had died.

“Hydra in there was…”

“Phil, I had nothing _left_ in there. I had nothing _but_ work. You weren’t there. All our friends were either dead in the takeover or never recruited. I was high ranking, but I wasn’t inner circle. There was plenty I didn’t know about. I didn’t have you, Fury, and Maria to hand me extra details. Mom died in the Takeover. Assassinated for knowing too much, just like she’s always worried about. And Katya… _everyone_ knew what I was, what I’d done.”

“What was different?” Phil asked.

He might as well. They were already talking about it and she’d had enough to drink to keep her heart from racing. Melinda was still silent a long time, trying to find the words.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he said gently.

She heard herself laugh, brief and harsh and empty. “Nothing. Nothing changed.”

His breathing changed when he understood. “ _…oh_. May, I…”

“First they had me in some like, ritzy spa place I knew was fake. Then AIDA or Radcliffe built a maze of some building around that house, made it feel like something I could escape. I must have run that simulation hundreds of times. Then I guess the actual Framework was ready.” Melinda swallowed, but didn’t stop, because if she stopped she wouldn’t tell him and if she didn’t she’d _never_ tell him.

“I don’t know how long I ran the Bahrain rescue mission for, but it finally just let her _hear_ me. She heard me and let them go, sat down. We were able to get her to an ambulance, give her something to make her drowsy. We were going to be able to get her _help_. Then it let me do it again.

But the last time… you already weren’t there. I already had no idea who you even _were._ I threatened someone else until they agreed to try and stall for me. Katya heard me, understood me. We got her back to the states. Andrew was working with her.”

“You still met him.”

“Yeah.” They hadn’t met through Phil or anyone he’d recruited so it hadn’t changed. They’d hit it off at a damn bus stop because of a friend of a friend, that kind of thing. It’d all been so normal once.

“Good.”

“He wasn’t real. And she made him tell me how happy he was when she killed…” She still couldn’t say it. Two lifetimes and both of them he’d have been safer, been better off without her.

Phil squeezed her hand tight. Their feet shushed through the water slow.

“You told Fury no, in college. You must have. If you’d quit the Academy I’d have still met you.”

“I did. But Simmons was right. It didn’t quite _take_ for me. I remembered too many details from the real world, knew things before they happened sometimes, said things I shouldn’t. I think it messed with whatever passed for my brain chemistry in there eventually. But I turned Fury down. Rewrote my project about something else not-classified. Graduated late, got my teaching certification instead of going to graduate school. Tried to live simply. Married someone I never loved and had nothing in common with because it seemed like I should. Was committed twice, both brief thankfully. I never met…”

Anyone, she realized. He’d never met anyone. Melinda knew about the two other women he’d loved and the few fuck-buddies he’d been fond of, all of them people he’d met through Shield. He’d never met anyone he’d been in love with, or any of his closest friends. Their friends.

It sounded so empty. Even in that hellscape, she’d been happy long enough to know what she’d lost.

Melinda reach out to wrap her arm around his waist. Hands weren’t enough. His arm settled around her shoulders easily, rubbed fingers along her triceps.

They ended up making out on the couch until Phil was ready to sleep.

***

_Simmons was in medical when May had left Daisy to shower. She was still in the same clothes from yesterday, cheeks pale, the thin skin of her eyelids an angry red. May knew you could cry so much for so long that skin would give in and peel. Simmons was still wearing her ring._

_May didn’t ask how she was doing. Simmons wouldn’t take the opening. Simmons would try too hard to be brave and lie._

_“He’ll wake up soon. I’ll let this bag of fluids finish; it’ll help compensate for the missed meals and the blood loss the other day. His vitals are holding at the levels from before he lost consciousness on the way back to earth. It’s not improvement, but he’s stable for now,” she said, straightening the blanket over Phil’s arm and moving quickly to a different monitor._

_Something about her energy seemed off. Loss was still there like an open wound, but there was something else now._

_“Thank you, for checking in on him.”_

_“I remembered something last night,” Simmons said._

***

They drove up into the city again, first to look around since they hadn’t much the first time, second to stop in a real grocery store.

The streets were mostly narrow, cars and taxis and the occasional bus. Lots of bikes. Parking was hit or miss, but they weren’t wrangling a Shield van and they weren’t rushing to a target.

Phil had always liked this kind of city. The garbled architecture, the bright color and a little grime, all the people out doing whatever tasks they were doing. Places that were too polished always seemed like they’d lost something vital.

May was definitely humoring him when they stopped so he could snap a few pictures. She’d always been indifferent to crowds and to architecture done in the last thousand years, so he only took a few.

They made their way down close to the marina to watch the ferry head out, get a better look at the smaller islands across the water.

He couldn’t walk very fast or for very long, but that didn’t matter much here. Hadn’t been much of a problem at all so far. They weren’t in a hurry anymore.

There were more ‘fancy resort people’ in this part of the city, more English and Mandarin around. It was obvious they were tourists. People wanted to make small talk while they watched the ferry come in, while they waited for a table for lunch.

The slightest eyeroll from May told him she didn’t care what he made up.

So Phil pretended one of them was on sabbatical, rolled with it when another couple assumed they were thinking about retiring, mentioned grown kids busy back in the states when another man mentioned his.

Phil pretended like they’d been married for years. It wasn’t the first time, and it was definitely less of a farce pretending this was their second marriage than some of their other cover stories had been, but it felt odd. If things had played out a little differently they could have been together like this for months now.

“Do we really look like people who’d be retiring soon?” he asked a bit later, sitting in a nice restaurant with a view of the water.

There was a difference between stepping aside for fresher pair of eyes and actually retiring, right? It wasn’t like it affected him either way anymore, but he didn’t feel like a retiree. May certainly didn’t look like one.

May only shrugged. “We would if you had the hat.”

He huffed at her, reached for his daiquiri. They’d bought cocktails with lunch because why the hell not. This was already going to be a ridiculously indulgent kind of meal.

Phil noticed his hand against the glass and then just _stared_ at his hands, faintly horrified. “Oh.”

“Hm?”

“I didn’t think about tanning,” he said. Phil set his hands on the table in front of them, threaded the fingers together. His left hand was noticeably paler at this point, noticeably less freckled than his right.

Of course the synthetic skin wouldn’t tan. How had that not ever crossed his mind? Sure he’d mostly lived in bunkers or planes since it had happened, but it’d been a couple years now. It wasn’t like he’d forgotten how the sun worked.

May made a tiny sound and he finally looked up, noticed the look on her face. It was the way her mouth always quivered when she was _desperately_ trying not to laugh.

He sighed. “Go ahead and laugh Melinda.”

She pressed a hand over her mouth rather than make a loud sound in front of a vacationer lunch crowd, but by the time their food arrived her cheeks were flushed from silent laughter.

It’d been a few years since they’d been able to sit down together, splurge on some form of surf and turf. The last time had probably been in D.C. after one of their last classified meetings when Shield was re-legitimizing. It’d been a very quiet dinner, crumpled suits and dark circles under eyes.

This time Phil got to tease her when she closed her eyes a full three seconds after that first bite of steak.

Early evening traffic was starting when they left, but he only gave her one wrong turn getting to the store. They’d started to miss having butter around.

He was trying not to notice his hands in the sunlight, but it was still too soon to un-see it. “This is too weird.”

“It’s not the important part,” May said, patting the side of his upper arm.

“Are you actually trying to tell me upper arms are the important part?”

“Compared to stupid tan lines? Yup.”

Was that really what she… “Are you serious?”

May gave him that look like he’d said something strange, reached out and squeezed around one of his biceps with a faint humming sound.

He wasn’t quite sure he understood whatever this was, but he really hadn’t been planning on having a conversation about things May found attractive while standing in the middle of a parking lot.

“You want me to pose?” He was only halfway into some awful men’s catalog muscle pose before she was laughing, shaking her head at the ground.

Phil held her hand walking into the store.

It was hard to put into words the kind of joy it was, getting to be with her like this. Not just that things had turned a bit romantic for them, though yeah, that was amazing. It’d been so long since he’d had her company and the luxury of some time to share it with her, since she’d been steady in her own skin. On some level it felt like he’d gotten his best friend back, though on others he knew that wasn’t quite fair. She hadn’t gone anywhere, not really. But they’d spent so much time apart this last decade or so and now they were together.

That was Melinda May, following him around a grocery store with an armful of bags of chips while he looked for gelatin and narrating in Mandarin how very sad it was he’d gotten lost.

He could only half understand the general meaning, and only when she was the one speaking, but that had never mattered. She was happy and here and teasing him over nothing and Phil was so happy he was kinda worried if he kept thinking about it he’d cry.

Putting the groceries away turned into making out with May sitting on the counter turned into her bolting for the bed as if he’d chase her.

He did not push his luck and chase her, but Phil made just enough of an attempt at pinning her arms he ended up on his belly in a blur, hearing a smug hum from her behind him which became a yelp and then cursing when he rolled over on top of her and laid there with a heavy sigh, pretended to settle in.

Playful squirming turned into a hand down his boxers turned into them on their sides again, a grind in his hips and a roll in hers that took them both apart with pretty minimal effort.

They were getting good at this.

It was so nice to touch, to try and drown himself in how she felt, how his brain hazed at the snug warm _cling_ of her around his body. He could feel her familiar hands squeezing at his shoulders with no fabric between them, the way she lapped over his lips when they kissed, the restless squirm of her foot against his leg.

There was knowing how to please someone in general and then there was _knowing_. There were all the little things he knew now, to kiss her deep right after she came, muscles limp and shivery, that when he had a hand free while they fucked she’d rather he kneaded her breast than thumbed over her clit.

He knew the angle to hold her hip at so his cock would rub that one softer spot and wring that sharp little cry out of her mouth when she came around him.

And Phil’s skin was too thin, nerves too raw to know much of anything but that sound and her slick touch at that point.

Holding her afterwards was almost just as good, her arm limp across his chest and the damp fuzz of her against his flank, the almost feline way she rubbed her face against his neck and shoulder.

She usually fell asleep, at least for a little while.

Phil took every moment he could get to just bask in all of this.

They really weren’t going to want dinner, so it seemed like a good time to bake something. He’d been meaning to try making po’e.

Melinda had no idea what he was doing and he definitely didn’t want her near the oven, but when he handed her a bowl of bananas and said, “Here, squish these,” they got very thoroughly pulverized.

Maybe too pulverized. Phil wasn’t quite sure he’d gotten the dish right, but it was the kind of fruit-heavy sweetness May liked.

They ate bowls of the pudding still warm, sprawled on the bed and only half paying attention to Star Wars V.

***

_May didn’t quite understand it and when Phil woke up he didn’t quite follow Simmons words either. To be fair to them both, she went through at least five different theories of time travel while she talked._

_The important part was the Fitz who’d come to them in the future was still asleep here, still on the way to them. Maybe still even in the solar system._

_It would never be the same. But that was still Fitz. The Fitz they’d all sat down with in a diner what felt like years ago. Alive. And it was so much more than any of them had thought they’d ever have last night._

_May had seen that cold fire in Simmons before. It was a good thing._

_The little shred of hope was enough to change the air in the whole plane._

***

Melinda opened her eyes and didn’t see Phil’s back. Somehow she’d already gotten used to waking up to his shoulders.

He’d moved. She’d slept through him moving. Her heart lurched in panic and she sat bolt upright.

“Hey there,” Phil rasped gently from where he’d been sitting behind her.

“Don’t let me _sleep_ like that,” she snapped. Phil ignored the edge in her voice.

“You know you’ll curl your fingers around mine if I put them in your palm? You were really asleep. Think I wore you out,” he said, a smug edge to his bright-eyed grin.

But he grimaced when he turned back around, his hand on his ankle. He hadn’t quite turned fast enough to hide it from her.

“What is it?”

“Ah, legs feel weird today. My toes are stiff. Think we should go swim in a bit, yeah?”

She leaned up on her elbows enough she could see the puffiness to his ankles, his stiff toes.

Edema. Edema wasn’t a great sign. He seemed to feel ok, as much as she could tell from looking, and she could tell more than he wanted her too. His eyes were bright, alert. The nerve pain came and went.

“Lay back down.”

“Hmm?”

She pulled at his shirt. “Lay down.”

He did, slowly. She didn’t really move at first, rolled onto her side to rub her face against his shoulder, breath him in. Clean salt sweat, cotton. Sleepy smells. She let him kiss her once.

Melinda knelt up and rubbed along his legs, not really focusing on muscle groups, just on encouraging his blood to flow properly. And she liked his skin under her hands, still warm, the grey-brown fuzz on his shins and his smoother thighs. How he was watching her through his lashes. How he moaned when she dug her thumbs into the muscle a few inches above his knees.

She was straddling his slim calves, when she finally bent forward to rub her cheek against the front of his boxers. He was _warm_.

His breath caught. “…May?”

“I feel like bothering,” she said. He’d said she should let him know when.

“Oh. _Please_.”

Melinda liked the need in his voice, how wide his eyes got as she pulled his boxers down and off. She even liked the pink of his cock.

She shoved her hair back to one side, out of her way but where it would brush against his flank, but before she did anything else she kissed the groove along each hipbone, said, “These are nice,” before she sucked him.

She’d never gotten much out of doing this, but she needed to do it once at least once. Taste him just like this. Feel him in her throat. Heartbeat on her tongue.

One hand on the bed kept her balance. The other rested lightly on his belly, felt every twitch and shudder. Neither of them were loud during sex, but he moaned pretty when she got it just right.

The second time his hand flailed up off the bed she put it in her hair. It fisted tight, but didn’t pull. He whimpered quietly, came so hard and sudden it might have startled them both.

She choked just a little. Swallowed once, pulled off and held him against his own belly with her lips and fingers until he stopped shuddering through orgasm.

It smeared wet between their bellies when he dragged her up to kiss her, stroke her tongue with his. She wasn’t close and didn’t care. When his hand reached to stroke her she held it tight, pulled it to her chest.

He murmured her name into her hair. Melinda really liked that.

They didn’t bother to rinse off. They’d be in the surf soon enough. There was no reason not to share breakfast sticky and reeking of sex.

Phil warmed croissants in a pan, sliced mangos.

She used the dented French press to make his coffee while he was busy. Just because she hated the stuff didn’t mean she didn’t know how. She’d seen him wince yesterday, pressing the water through the grounds, trying to use pectoral muscles that didn’t want to be moved.

Phil thanked her with his hand on her wrist, said it was good.

***

_Phil got up. May spotted how he locked his knees to do it, but he got up. She kept her arm tight around his waist while they walked to what had been his bunk for months. He was moving better by the time they got there._

_He needed a shower, they both did. But chest compressions meant it was going to hurt to lift his arms, to get his thin sweater off. Phil sat down without protest, let her push his jacket off his shoulders, lift sweater and shirt over his head._

_She’d seen the blackening scar tissue more than once now, but it was much worse. The dark lines spread under his waistband, down to his wrists. The inky patch on his chest was wide as her hand. It’d be the same on his back. Just below it was a round bruise in livid reds and blues from Elena’s metal palms. Because his heart had stopped again._

_And she hadn’t been with him. Again._

_May didn’t pause, turned to drop the dirty clothes on a shelf, but her vision blurred from tears. She heard Phil sigh. He stood and pulled her close, cheek to his chest._

_With her eyes closed tight it just felt like skin._

***

Phil had dozed off in the sand. He was sleeping more and more during the day. Napping on a beach wasn’t really a bad thing, but Melinda knew the real reasons for it. It wasn’t because of being so relaxed on their vacation.

They’d waded out again today, no snorkel gear, just far enough to really feel the ocean around them, to let the tide pull and watch some glossy little fish. Not far enough to really have to swim. Phil could still touch bottom most of the time. She’d treaded water.

His body was starting to break down more and more.

Melinda watched the rise and fall of his belly while he breathed. Slow. Even.

Somehow he’d actually tanned. He always got so blotchy pink at first, different from her skin that tanned quick and even, from Nat’s who never tanned or burned, from Barton who burnt then browned quickly in the sun.

Phil freckled, patches of them across his shoulders and cheeks, under her fingertips in the shower or while he slept. She’d never used to touch them, but now it felt like a need.

Even with all the sleep and sun, the circles under his eyes were deep and dark, tell-tale just like his chest and back.

Normally she might have taken this opportunity to bury him in the sand, but she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. Not like this.

Melinda piled sand around his head into a massive hat shape instead.

He stirred a while after she was done, after she’d gone back to laying in the sand on her stomach, propped on elbows to watch the ocean. “Mmmm, Mel? Wha…”

Phil laughed when his hands found the hat. He asked her to get the camera from inside so he wouldn’t mess it up.

She refused to get in the picture with him. Her smile would be forced.

His was bright.

***

_The Lighthouse was packing up and shutting down around them. They were browsing beach house listings, hip to hip on the bunk with damp hair. Lots of them were ridiculous._

_“Why the hell would you travel halfway into the Pacific to enjoy the ocean and then insist on having a swimming pool instead?” He scrolled by viciously. “And aircon in a room with a screen door?”_

_“We’ve both slept outside in remote jungle before,” May pointed out. To be fair, it had been kind of terrifying and disgusting. Everything in deep jungle seemed to be poisonous and covered in bugs, but it meant air conditioning wasn’t a deal-breaker._

_“No camping. I’m not interested in roughing it anymore. There’s going to be actual windows and a kitchen in this thing.”_

_Things had gone south so fast last time some of his things were still in the bunk he’d used, stationed on the Zephyr as a field agent all those months. There’d been a soft, button-up shirt in a drawer, a grey hoodie with a zipper that had probably been stolen from Barton years ago._

_It’d taken May less than 20 minutes to pack everything they’d used from the Lighthouse. Now she just stayed with him. That was it._

***

He’d bought the hammock during their last quick run for fresh things, more fruit, white fish and shrimp. More rice and some hot chilis. Phil had been cooking from memory, things he remembered her liking before.

He’d finally managed to buy something else as well, hidden away in a drawer. For later. Phil was glad he’d had the time and glad it was done.

His right hand was clumsier these days, stiff and weak, unable to make a fist. Leaning on the dexterity of his left made his head ache, but there was only so many time Phil felt like dropping utensils.

It hadn’t taken much extra rope to string the hammock up between two palm trees. May had done it while he cooked dinner with the door wide open. Now she was curled half on his chest with her knees around wrapped around his thigh. His other foot just brushed the warm sand.

It was getting late, long gone dark. Phil just didn’t want to move.

He hadn’t felt this peaceful in so many years.

He’d told May he’d come to terms with everything, and he had. But, maybe that felt different than actually making peace with everything, Or maybe this was just how it felt to not constantly be waiting for the other, unseen shoe to drop. There were no more shoes. It is well with my soul.

 “Let’s stay out here.”

“We’re not sleeping out here,” she mumbled. That it probably wasn’t safe for him to sleep all night without the oxygen anymore went unsaid.

“Just a while longer.”

The stars were bright and huge above them, like something you could touch.

“We’ve been up there, you and me,” he said.

“Hm.”

“We both flew a spaceship.”

She snorted. “ _I_ flew a spaceship. You crashed it.”

Phil kissed the top of her head. “You blew up a spaceship.”

“Yup,” and she sounded just as smug about it as he’d known she would be. “But it wasn’t mine. And he was an ass.”

“Sure was. So judgmental.”

The surf shushed against the beach and the palm leaves rustled heavily. The hammock was soft. Melinda’s cheek squished warm against his shoulder.

He’d always dreamed of going to space. Now he had.

This was better.

***

_She started making supply lists on her tablet. It needed doing, for them and whoever was staying to crew the Zephyr, to take it back into space._

_“We can buy food when we’re there you know.”_

_“This’ll be easier. We both know it won’t be the first time someone’s parked a cloaked quinjet near a Costco or something.” Resupply had been surreal for a couple years._

_“I’m fine with eating fish and fruit until…”_

_Phil was smart enough to shut the hell up before he actually said until I drop dead. May glowered. “We’ll need to bring some things.”_

_He squeezed a hand over his eyes. “I can’t believe I’m talking about vacation supplies on the Zephyr.”_

_“We need more supplies on here anyway. For them. It might be a long trip. And I want pancakes.”_

***

He fell.

The next morning his legs folded out from under him, knees and one shoulder hitting the beach. He didn’t make a sound, didn’t move.

It was a blink before Melinda hit the sand next to him, skidding on her knees.

_Shit. Shit. Oh God please…_

But with her hands light on his back she could feel him still breathing. Sound came back.

“Phil? Phil, can you…”

She forgot to count how long he was out. He finally moved, got his elbows under him but didn’t try to get up.

“I’m fine I just… greyed out a minute… I guess. I guess my… chest got tight again.”

Melinda cried. She couldn’t hold it down for later, helped him roll onto his side and then turned her back on him.

“Mel…” he rasped, wanting her to turn around.

She didn’t, managed to make some kind of negative noise. Sand on her legs and saltwater on her face.

Phil sighed. His hand rested gently on her spine.

When he sat up she stood. When he stood she walked away.

***

_“Have you talked to Mack?”_

_“Not yet. But I agree with her choice. I agreed with the idea behind the vote, even though you all didn’t quite get around to it.”_

_May only shrugged. She wasn’t going to apologize._

_“We know Mack. We know how he and Daisy work together. I’m not worried. Just because we trained her for it doesn’t mean she wants it, doesn’t make her ready. She’s still young. Mack won’t keep this job that long. Just long enough. I never wanted it.”_

_“You dropped it in her lap.” Same way Fury had dropped it in his._

_“Things got more urgent than I’d hoped.” He wasn’t going to apologize about it either._

_They all knew how urgent everything was right now. The government would come to this godforsaken base soon enough. Alien ships generally caused that. They were encrypting locks and welding doors. Just enough to last for a while. They needed to go back to space. Everyone was counting days for so many reasons._

_May wasn’t counting days._

***

She brought it up again. Had to.

Surgery couldn’t fix the extent of the not-quite-necrosis. The Centipede was depleted. There was no Kree blood on Earth right now that they knew of. But she still had contacts. There were so many weird, dark corners in the world. She should be looking. God why wasn’t she still _looking_.

But Phil was so angry he almost recoiled.

“Why is _I don’t want it_ not a good enough answer for anyone?” he snapped.

“I understand your problem with the centipede serum, even after Simmons worked on it. I understand why you don’t want something unnatural. But we still could have…”

“And I understand why you and Daisy had to look, even though it was behind my back, against everything I asked for, and put people’s safety at risk. I understand why you had to try. But I don’t want to live with another version of alien duct tape for injuries that should have never healed.”

“I understand that, but we could have tried something _else_ Phil.”

He was staring. He was staring at her and it was such an odd look on his face she went silent.

“No you don’t understand. You can’t.”

“What?”

“I never told you about T.A.H.I.T.I.”

“We’re _on_ Tahiti,” she growled. “I know about the false memories. I know they lied to you.” The _and I did too_ remained unsaid. They both knew that, though she hadn’t had details at the time.

“No, the… in that base. The one that blew out from under us. The one Fury hid at Level 10.”

Slowly, Melinda sat down across from him.

“Garrett said,” though she said his name with a grimace now, “that when he found you it was like you’d seen a ghost.”

His face had gone still. “I didn’t want to think about it for so long. And then you found the video and I started carving and it just, ended up in the back of my mind. I put it away.”

“The machine?” she asked quietly. Phil hadn’t come back to the base until it had been welded inside a containment unit.

“No. When you asked me what made me change my mind about the GH 325, in my room on the bus…I lied.”

Melinda almost wanted to reach for him, but he’d held back for years when she couldn’t handle that kind of touch.

Something told her he couldn’t handle being touched right now.

“I found…I guess I found the Guest.”

It wasn’t the machine. Guest implied something biological. “You mean…”

“I mean behind a door in those labs was half a blue person floating in a tank. Eyeless. And there were about a dozen tubes running out of them into some other nightmare machine and then into about 300 little vials.”

She stared. Couldn’t picture it.

“Some, some biological process was still active. Had to be. How else could it….” He trailed off into silence.

They sat in silence for what seemed like a long time.

“Kree,” she finally said. It had to be. Part of a Kree that Old Shield had apparently had for years.

“We know that now. That much at least,” he said bitterly. “Down there, T.A.H.I.T.I. was just the acronym. I still don’t remember what it meant. I don’t want to. And between that and the other survivors we found… I do know why I told Fury I’d walk away if he wouldn’t stop.”

“Phil. I know it was,” and she swallowed hard, “bad. But we don’t know how much of that was because you’d been gone for so…” She still couldn’t say it. “Daisy didn’t have the same aftereffects as you and the others. And one of them is still fine.”

“That’s exactly it though.”

“What is?”

“I can’t know how much was that, my being a corpse, or how much was alien biology being grafted somewhere it doesn’t belong, or how much was the machines invented at the House.”

There had to be more options than that. He was still breathing this time. “Phil, if we could…”

He slapped his hand down on the table between them. Loud. She didn’t jump, but Phil didn’t resort to those kind of gestures very often. It took a lot to push him there.

Very softly Phil said, “I would rather walk out into the water and eat a bullet right now than feel that again. I would gladly chew through an artery before I feel any of that again. Do you understand me?”

It had been a very long time since Melinda had run out of fingers for how many times she’d seen Phil beaten to maintain a cover or in an interrogation. She’d seen him after he’d been drugged, shot, and stabbed, after he’d been starved. She’d seen him in the aftermath of systematic torture four times.

So she knew what it meant that his voice sounded worse now. It was the only thing that let her choke out, “Yes.”

***

_“Look at this one?” Phil murmured._

_It had what they were looking for, quiet beach and a useable kitchen. A big bed. But it was on the far side of the smaller island._

_“No. Not that remote. If you’re unconscious I need to be able to get you help.” They both knew he might pass out and then just stay under until… She could put in an IV if she had to, but that wouldn’t be enough to handle days._

_Phil leaned back with a blank expression, but she could see the chill underneath. “No hospitals. I’ve said. When it’s done it’s done May.”_

***

May’d been clingy since he fell. Since they’d… talked. But clingy wasn’t really the right word to use. The orbit between them had just shrunk some more.

They’d sat in silence at the little kitchen table for a while. Phil had finally noticed his right hand ached a little, that there was a scrape in the wood next to his thumb that had been there since before they’d arrived. May stared out at nothing.

Eventually he’d gotten up and found their bottle of scotch, poured himself a splash and May several fingers, set the glass in front of her when she didn’t move to take it.

After she’d drunk it down they’d tried to go back to normal. He’d read for a while, cooked some shrimp and they’d sat outside to eat.

Later she opened the little door and got in the shower with him. They’d been rinsing off together plenty, but this time she invited herself to wash his hair, his back like it was something they’d done a hundred times, ignoring all the scars, hands brisk and gentle on him.

She ducked back out with out getting her hair wet, but Phil would have to see if she’d let him wash it. Sometime soon.

It didn’t take him long to finish up, shrug on a thin grey tank top, brush teeth and turn out lights. Normal tasks.

May had sprawled belly-down on the bed wearing absolutely nothing.

He must have made a sound because she wriggled back at him teasingly, scarred thigh and string bikini tan lines, and dark hair flopped over her face.

Ok then.

He’d been running hot since he woke up on the sand. The pattern continued; the degeneration took two or three steps forward and one step back.

So he was already half-hard before he knelt on the bed over her legs and rubbed himself along the cleft of her pretty little ass.

May gasped and then gave a short laugh, squirming. He found her hips with his hands and held tight, held them both in place. When she tried to arch up, change the angle and get him to sink inside between her legs Phil didn’t let her move.

“Come _on_ ,” she growled back at him.

“This works for me,” he hummed breathlessly. And it definitely did.

She slumped forward on her elbows with a pout he could almost _hear_. “You jackass.”

“Hmm.” He could be sometimes. But this was just a game.

He was still surprised when May suddenly looked back over her shoulder like she’d just won it.

“Come on me,” she said.

His eyes went wide. “Are you serious?”

“Yup.” She rode up on her knees, rolled back against him, pressure and heat and fuck she was seriously going to let him do this.

That was too much. The air was too hot in his mouth and his skin was somehow too tight for his body. His forehead pressed into the back of her shoulder when he came.

He fell to the side to catch his breath, too winded again and half his nerves too raw to touch the sheets. And he couldn’t take his eyes off May’s skin.

May perked up with way too much energy. “I’m going to go jump in the water.”

“Wait, what?” he asked, but she’d already crawled over the edge of the mattress to the floor so they didn’t have to change the sheets. By the time he stood up she was already running out the door and across the beach, a blur of pale limbs and a crash when she hit the surf, a faint yell from further out when she came up for air.

Phil ended up waiting on the porch with a towel.

In another life he’d strip down and get in with her, but the walk had made something lurch in his chest. Better not to risk it.

She wasn’t in long. The evening was getting dimmer. He watched with half a smile as she came back to shore like this was an op, coasting with the surf with just dark eyes and nose out of the water, crawling forward on her arms until it was too shallow and she ran up the beach into the open towel in his arms.

He hugged her to him, saltwater on his shirt while she shivered with a victorious little grin.

Phil loved that smile, had to kiss it, stroke her cheek with his thumb.

He rubbed the towel gently along her shoulders. “Are you…You literally ran out the door before I could offer, uh, anything.”

She’d let him tease her and tease himself with her, but he’d never been into the endings being one sided. That wasn’t any fun anymore.

But between her running outside to go skinny dipping and the way she was staring out at the last of the sunset it seemed like the moment had shifted.

She shrugged, leaned her head back on his shoulder. “Later.”

Phil’d make damn sure there was a later.

He’d have rather picked her up again, but knew better, had to settle for bringing cups of water outside to rinse the sand off her feet.

***

_“I said hospital, not life support.”_

_Phil blinked once, but didn’t lean back into her side, watching her. Her shoulder felt cold._

_“I can make DNR papers that will work. But I won’t watch you rot cause I can’t wake you. If you stay under…”_

_After a long moment he said, “More than a day.”_

_May nodded and that tension went out of him, back to scrolling through beach houses that mostly looked the same._

***

They drove around to a different beach further south, black sand and pebbles, took the paddleboard out in the water again. Not to snorkel this time, just to look.

Phil wasn’t up for a long swim anymore. They just weren’t saying it.

The third time he’d asked if she minded being stuck with all the paddling she’d walked out of the house, tied the board to the 4-wheeler, and waited until he finally shuffled out after her with a sheepish expression.

It wasn’t that hard to steer them around seated, sit with him and look down through the clear water. It was a darker blue here, darker sand. There were more boulders and patches of coral.

They might have spotted a turtle once, spent almost 10 minutes circling the same spot just in case.

Phil gave up on sitting, sprawled on his back as much as they had space for, watching the little waves near his nose.

“Can you dive this deep without gear?”

Melinda squinted at him, but knew the real question was if she could do it comfortably. This was only 13 or 14 feet in clean warm water. “Sure.”

He pointed down. “See that pink smudge?”

She handed him the paddle, let him steady the board while she used it to jump up and dive.

It was quiet halfway down, a heavy quiet, different then space. The salt didn’t sting, but her vision blurred a little. The smudge was sharp against her fingers when she scooped it out of the sand.

The smudge was a broken bit of coral, pink and white, delicate out of the water.

Phil tucked it carefully into a lower pocket, wearing the flowered shorts over the leggings today.

He stayed on his back when she climbed back on the board, small grin and dark shades and sunburned cheeks, fingers and one foot in the water.

Melinda liked how he looked like this.

He was tired by the time they got back, mid-afternoon. She didn’t like to leave him alone in the house anymore. There was too much ambient noise outside, birds and sometimes human voices from offshore. She might miss a sound from inside.

The bedroom door was half open to let the breeze through.

Melinda kept glancing at the steady rise and fall of his belly while he breathed.

Those first few days she’d been able to just go back to sleep along with him. Afternoon naps were usually too much sleep for her, made her brain feel fuzzy.

But at first she’d been so tired.

She was starting to really feel the lack of being able to train. Swimming and stretching in the mornings took the edge off, but now that she’d had some sleep, now that her thigh was healing more it was starting to catch up with her.

Another glance at Phil showed him still sound asleep.

Melinda was able to shove the little couch and low table off to the side without too much noise, make just enough floor space under the circling fan to start tai chi.

***

_“You want me to swear it in blood like we did in ‘91?” she asked wryly. No one did that anymore for good reason, but they’d been new and terrified back then._

_“No. I trust you.”_

_She heard what he meant though. What he meant was I am trusting you, I am trusting you not to take this away from me when I can’t fight back. Please don’t hurt me like he did._

_If she thought about what she was promising to watch she’d scream._

_But._

_May remembered him close to tears and pointing a gun at her too well to do anything else._

***

He was moving weird.

She knew his gait, and the way he’d gotten stiff in the shoulders now. This stood out. Something was off. He’d rinsed his mouth after coffee like usual but now he was sitting on the couch very still, not reading. Just sitting without leaning on anything.

“What’s up?”

Phil stopped himself before he shrugged, sighed. “It hurts today.”

Oh. “You said it didn’t always.”

“Sometimes, it’s like the nerves try to wake back up. Its… I can’t describe it. It’ll probably stop in a couple hours.”

“Stop?” she asked doubtfully.

“Fine,” he said with a glare. “It should go back to baseline. I can handle the baseline.”

“We have painkillers.”

She’d been hit square across the center of her back with a length of steel pipe once, and the guy who’d swung had a hell of an arm. The bruising had made every breath agony. The extra-strength painkillers that were usually too much for her body mass had barely seemed to touch it.

He gave his head a tiny shake. “Its nerves. The normal stuff isn’t going to touch it. The heavy stuff will mess with my head. I don’t want it.”

Melinda sighed heavily, but she wasn’t going to argue unless it got worse. And there were other things that might help. “Can you turn over?”

“Yeah? Why?”

She just gave him a look, motioned again for him to turn over onto his belly. When he couldn’t manage the twist needed she helped with hands on his shoulders.

Then she climbed up to straddle the backs of his thighs.

Last time she’d done this hadn’t really been about pain relief, so this was a more serious massage than she’d given in years, working systematically over muscle groups, moving outwards from as much of the centerline that still seemed safe to touch.

She’d already had one nightmare where she went to touch him and her fingers sank into the deadened skin.

The muscles under her fingers stayed stiff, but his jaw relaxed, fingers uncurled. It had to help a little bit. There were still tendons in him with all the right nerves, all the little muscles that wrapped his ribs.

She shifted to sit more on his ass while she worked the heels of her hands along his shoulders, bucked into him when he squirmed.

“Too bad we probably can’t get a strap here quickly,” he mumbled. “Shipping must be a nightmare.”

“…what?!”

He peered back at her through one half-open blue eye. “You think I’ve never noticed you looking at my ass? Thought you liked it.”

She knew what he was talking about. Of course she did. She’d even played along with the idea of that when a target’s tastes had run the opposite of what Shield’s intel had said. She’d had a few sex partners mention it.

Melinda had just, never done that with a lover.

But what she said was, “I should have guessed this about you when you were so into the neon rubbers.”

Phil laughed hard enough to shake her, even while he tried to hold his chest still. Poking his hip to make him stop only made it worse.

She finally laid down on him, warm and heavy.

Phil pulled her hand around to kiss her fingers.

***

_The others found out about their plans quickly enough. Daisy would have spoken to Mack who would have spoken to others. Because they all clearly knew._

_Phil was asleep. She’d wanted to check over the plane real quick, just in case. Davis was a decent pilot now, but it was her plane even if it wasn’t her bus._

_Mack nodded. Piper smiled. Davis reached out and gently squeezed her shoulder._

_Simmons was sitting next to cold storage with a computer. Her eyes were wet in a blank face, but there was a flicker of something warm when she looked up._

_Daisy stopped in front of her in the hallway. “You… you’ll come back, right?”_

_It was too far ahead for now, the idea of coming back to this, to metal halls and opponents and people to train, boots and fists and blood. But May still knew the answer._

_“When you need me, I’ll be here.”_

***

Coulson had _gotten around_ over the years, same as May. That’s just how it was. They’d both traveled a lot and spent their 20s and 30s in about as peak physical condition as most people ever got. Interested company had never been that hard to find when they’d wanted some.

He’d also spent a lot of that time sleep-deprived and injured.

So, it was hardly the first time his dick hadn’t cooperated with him. It wasn’t a panicky thing at this point in his life. As long as he kept avoiding thinking in terms of _lasts_ it was fine.

It was still pretty disappointing when May’s hand on him barely got a twitch, nice as it felt.

She squirmed up onto her elbows with a little frown. “You ok?”

He covered her hand on his chest. “I’m fine. Think that’s done for a while unless I take something. Sorry.”

Phil was surprised for a moment when May scowled and pulled away. She couldn’t possibly take it personal? He would have thought they were both too old for that kind of insecurity.

“Take something? Are you serious?”

Oh. “Why not?”

“What do you mean why not?” she snapped, pointing angrily at his chest. “You seriously think throwing drugs that mess with your blood into the mix with _that_ is a great idea?”

“I really don’t think that’s exactly how this is…”

“We’ve already had problems controlling it when you bleed. You think I’d be fine putting you at risk just for a…”

“Of course not! It’s just, it’s not gonna hurt anything if I take the pills.”

“We don’t know that!”

Buck naked and yelling at each other from the opposite sides of a mattress had never been an image of them in his head before, but it probably should have. It really should have. They’d had too many ridiculous arguments over the last 30 or so years for him to have never considered this. It was an oversight.

“You can’t know that it’s not going to…”

“I called a fucking helpline and checked, ok?” he yelled. Actually yelled, loud. He usually avoided that, but this whole conversation was ridiculous and getting nowhere.

May went silent, blinked twice then squinted, just a little.

That was always a bad sign. He gave her that look, the _oh don’t you goddamn start May_ look, but it’d never been very effective.

Phil was pretty sure some of the lines on his face came directly from making this expression at her so much over the years.

“Was it an actual helpline for fucking? Or are you just mad your circulation is shit today,” she said.

“Oh give me a…” Phil flopped down on his back with a heavy sigh, covered his face with his hands.

He could still _hear_ May’s smug expression. Damnit.

“It was not a helpline for fucking. When have I _ever_ given you the impression I would need a helpline for fucking,” he said, already resigned to never hearing the end of this.

“Never. You know I had to bawl out a girl in the D.C. locker-room one time cause of you,” she said, clearly pleased with herself.

“Oh my fucking God I don’t want to know,” he said as a genuine plea.

Mel only grinned wickedly.

“If, if you wanted to try that, I’ll go get them,” she said hesitantly after a moment, both offer and apology for snapping before.

Phil considered it, but then pressed a hand to his chest instead. “My heart’s just not in it anymore.”

“Now _that’s_ rude,” she grumbled, turning away to rifle through the dresser.

“If you want me to shut up, come sit on my face.”

May went still, watching him.

Phil held out a hand to her. He kept quiet but in his head he was thinking _come on come on let me do this I know you can go again and I think I’m done for the day come on come here please sweetheart_.

He held still while she stared, clearly turning something over in her head, but her eyes were dark and fathomless. He couldn’t even guess what she was considering in there. She hadn’t let him do this very long before. Maybe she didn’t have much of a taste for it. Maybe they’d both just been too impatient the other times. But the way her back had arched up off the bed that first time he kissed her there, the hot-soft throb of her under his mouth…

The taste of her kind of made his head spin. He’d _really_ like to take his time.

May finally blinked and took his hand, climbed back onto the bed until the smooth tops of her feet settled lightly against his upper arms, hovering over him mostly on her knees.

Which didn’t do either of them much good. Phil couldn’t help but lick his lips. “C’mere.”

“I… don’t want to put that much weight on your chest.”

Right, cause having the soft skin of her adorable ass against his chest was going to be _so_ hard to deal with.

Phil slid his palms up over the sharp points of her hips. “May, you don’t _weigh_ anything. I could still pick you up with one arm right now.” Sure, she was heavier than people expected because of her musculature, but she’d never been heavy to him, not ever. And he’d carried her three miles once while she’d been unconscious.

May grinned down at him, at his face between her thighs. “Don’t you kinda have to?”

This part was just so _fun_ , the not biting their tongues around each other anymore, not treading carefully, not _having_ to. Things had been so tense for so long. They’d used to tease each other mercilessly, every shitty date and bad haircut and on-mission screw-up. It felt good.

“Think I should shut you up,” Phil growled, nuzzling along her thigh.

Putting his mouth to her, still flushed and clit still plump under his tongue from his hands on her before and hearing her hand slap the wall was even better.

***

_It hadn’t quite been a day when May found Elena near the cargo ramp._

_“Thank you,” she said, because Coulson was still breathing for now. May could have come back to a body instead of a death sentence._

_Elena nodded. Her jaw clenched like she wanted to say something. “I can’t trust you like I did before, but I don’t blame you. For what you did.”_

_Just because the Odium turned out to not be the answer, that didn’t take away that May had waited for them to turn their backs to destroy it, because she knew they’d all trusted her to never make that kind of play. “I never thought it was the right move and it wasn’t, but not for the reasons I thought and not for the reasons you were told. You acted on what information you had. I don’t blame you either.”_

_Neither of them reached out. Elena hadn’t reached for anyone by Mack since the new arms. May knew knowing how to use them and being used to them were two very different things._

_She still took one metal hand in hers for a moment before she walked away._

***

He’d started coughing more.

There’d been the occasional fit of it the whole time, but it was more often now. More consistent. It bent him forward when it happened, leaning on the counter or the wall or his knees.

And there was next to nothing she could do to help.

They were low on bread, on fish and sweetened milk for coffee. But what did she do if they drove to a store? Leave him to sit outside? Risk him blacking out somewhere someone might see and call other people?

Of course, Phil said that since they’d have to bring the oxygen if they went out no matter what, they should go ahead and drive up the mountain.

She only argued a little bit. With the canula and the little tank, riding up probably wasn’t any worse that anything else.

The road didn’t go up most of the way, barely half, but that wasn’t a surprise. She found someplace to pull over with a good view, drink in the greens and blues while Phil took a few pictures.

They made it back here without incident, but Phil was tired again.

Melinda knew she wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, but she laid down with him anyway.

It was a nice day.

 

That night in the shower she let herself look. Made herself look.

The strange, blackened flesh was wider than her hand on his chest, the same on his back. Lines of it trailed thick down both arms and onto his right hand. It touched his collarbones, his hips. It was almost past his knees.

She’d seen it plenty, but had avoided noticing it as much as she could. She’d had to.

When she looked up Phil’s face was resigned and fond and sad around the edges.

He turned her around and gently washed her hair.

***

_Simmons was back in medical. Still in the same clothes, but she was typing purposefully, information scrolling by on three screens in front of her red eyes. Her face was blank._

_May wanted to ask if she’d eaten, showered, but she knew the answer was no and it was still soon enough it was better to give the girl space for now._

_“We’re missing materials, but I’ll keep the analysis going until you call me, until it’s… done. I understand all the objections, but perhaps we’ve missed something else. I have more data now. Daisy let me do some tests,” Simmons said in a clipped tone._

***

Melinda wasn’t totally sure how she’d ended up doing this. One of them had woken up in the dark, which had turned into slow kisses that got heated and then somehow into her kneeling between his thighs while his knees clutched her hips.

She’d only made him ask twice.

Somehow the wet latex was weirder like this, tucked around her fingers. Melinda had a bad feeling it was neon blue.

Phil tried to guide her wrist with his hand, but couldn’t really twist that way, so he covered his eyes and _talked_ instead.

It made her flush, hearing his voice tell her how to rub him, how he wanted her to push inside. He was blood-hot and tight just like she was. It kind of made her head spin, to be touching inside his body.

But she wasn’t completely sure what she thought of this until she felt the tense quiver in his legs against her. Melinda kissed one bony knee. “You shake just like me.” It was sweet.

Phil exhaled with a ragged sound. “Oh, oh damnit it’s been years. Mel, just…”

This was more what she was used to doing with her fingers now, pushing in a slow rhythm, finding the right spot to rub with her knuckles.

Phil’s hand was on his cock, but he was mostly just staring at her.

When she couldn’t stand it anymore, aching between her legs, she pulled away long enough to kneel over his hips, sink onto him before she arched her back, twisted to slide her fingers back inside.

His hand rubbed over the arch of her belly, stroked her breast, so he couldn’t stifle himself when he moaned loud.

It was better like that anyways.

***

_“Simmons…” Hope hurt more than resignation and May couldn’t carry that, not and carry everything else. But it was so kind of Simmons to offer._

_“I won’t stop until you tell me he’s dead and burned. Coulson has been…” and she swallowed hard._

_May waited for the rest of the words but they didn’t come. “Simmons, no one expects your priority to be anything other than…”_

_“I need to stay busy May,” she snapped. “Besides, I excel at preparation. He knows that,” she said and sniffled, hid it badly._

_Which ‘he’ she meant didn’t really matter. They both knew. May didn’t make Simmons turn around, didn’t take away that shred of dignity being able to turn your back gave, but she reached out and rubbed both hands gently down her arms, squeezed._

_Someone used to do that for her, a long time ago._

***

It was late. Phil wasn’t sure how late, because they’d unplugged the clock in here that first day. But they’d washed up and shaken out the sheets and curled up in the dark to sleep.

He felt good for now, no pain. The background ache had eased for now. The oxygen machine ran silently and this was far from the first time he’d had to wear a canula while sleeping. It wasn’t that strange.

Phil had his arm around her and she’d trapped his fingers between her thighs, his left arm tucked in warm between them.

“Will you tell me what you saw now?” he murmured into her hair. She’d get it.

Mel sighed. “Are you fucking serious Phil?”

“Yeah. I still wanna know.”

“I said I saw you.”

“Mayyyy,” he pretended to whine, nosing at the curve of her ear.

“I just didn’t see much Phil. I don’t know where we were. You were talking to me, but I don’t remember anything you said. Just your voice.”

Phil moved to hold her tighter, stroke over her warm skin. It still hurt that she’d been… and he hadn’t been with her.

“You were telling me something. Field voice, the one you use when I’m worried but you can see how it’s going to play out, how it’ll go right.”

He kept rubbing his palm over her flank while she spoke, fingers brushing her belly. “Thank you for telling me.”

“It wasn’t what I expected.”

“What were you expecting? Lost loved ones? Big, fancy stairway?” he murmured, teasing her a little, but he was still curious.

She snorted. “Something warmer.”

Phil sat up. She’d said warmer, but that was more like getting run over with a glacier. “May…”

She huffed. “You don’t even believe in heaven or hell Phil. Don’t get all weird about it.”

“You just told me you think you’re going to hell May. How the fuck am I supposed to react?” he snapped.

May hadn’t even moved or opened her eyes. “I don’t know what to think anymore.”

“Why would you ever think that?” he asked, but he knew why _oh God_ he knew why, but it’d never crossed his mind before. Maybe it should have. Maybe he could have actually helped if he’d just _realized_ …

“I don’t know my own body count anymore Phil. You know how awful that feels? I told Skye… Daisy a long time ago you never got used to it. And you don’t, but I’ve _lost track_.”

There was very little that could be said about something like that. Phil finally let out a shaky breath and laid down with his back to her. “I have too,” he said eventually.

It was something he’d thought about before, how the balance worked out. How the violence and lies and death counted when held against lives saved and destruction averted. Not so much whether someone was keeping a list somewhere with his name on it, but if the universe knew, if some system somewhere felt that energy lost and gained. Phil had no doubt May thought about it too, just in different ways.

It wasn’t really something they’d ever talked about before.

May rolled over after a while and pressed close, wrapping an arm lightly around his waist.

“Are you scared?” she whispered against his back.

“No. I’m just not. Dying’s inevitable. That was never the part that scared me.”

“Hm.”

May sounded dubious. Phil kissed her hand, realizing with a heavy kind of sadness that she was a lot more scared of this than he’d ever thought.

“Simmons was talking to me a little. Before.” When neither of them had been up to speaking directly about much of anything. “I liked her take on it.”

“What’s that?”

“We just get recycled back into the universe basically. The energy that was us turns into something new. It can’t be destroyed, not really. Not according to physics at least. I’d rather be useful than put somewhere I don’t understand.”

“Is that better? To not be you anymore?”

There was an edge to her voice he didn’t totally understand, like maybe this was another way to leave or give up, but that wasn’t it at all. Phil pressed her hand closer to his heart.

“Whatever chunk of me that’s gonna end up being part of a reef or something is still going to know it loves you.” No matter what came next, that was just reality.

She shuddered. “You’re still such a nerd.”

“Thank you Melinda.”

***

_Phil was staring at his feet on the deck when she let herself in, hands in his lap._

_“Daisy come by?”_

_“Yup.”_

_There wasn’t anything else to be said. Right decision or not, he’d tricked Daisy and now he was leaving her. It wouldn’t have been a good talk._

_His voice was hoarse, eyes rimmed red. She sat down on the bed with him hip to hip in silence._

***

They’d been here just over a week, a week and a few days, just handfuls of days and he’d passed out again.

They were just, sitting on the beach. His breathing hadn’t sounded quite right all day, but she knew what was happening to his chest, to his lungs and the muscles around his heart. They both knew very well.

He’d just… slumped over.

Melinda straightened out his neck against the towel more comfortably. After half a minute she rolled him onto his side, took his wrist between her fingers.

His pulse was too fast, but steady.

She was shivering. She saw it in her hands, but felt nothing.

Two minutes. How long before she should carry him inside? She could lift him if she could get him onto her shoulders, but it’d probably be too much pressure on his chest. Damnit. Was she really going to drag him? Drag him through the dirt like… _Damnit_ Phil.

Another minute. Another. His pulse and breathing hadn’t changed.

The sun would only get hotter. She might have to drag him.

His wrist tugged under her hand. He shifted. Blinked and squinted. “How long…?”

“Not long.” It was a moment before she could remember how to make her fingers let go of his wrist.

“Think I’d better go in for a bit,” he said, and she helped him carefully get his feet under him, lean on her shoulder.

Melinda shivered for a while afterwards.

But there were no options left to argue about. Nothing left for her to fight.

***

_They’d landed in a mown field to do resupply. Polly and Robin were leaving them here, moving on to the safehouse Daisy had set up with other agents._

_Polly had a bag over her shoulder, Robin’s small hand in hers. May knew inside the bag were the last of Robin’s drawings of that other world. They’d burned the rest when Robin shoved them away._

_May knelt down in front of the girl. Robin looked at her. May could tell she was seeing her, right here and now, but wasn’t sure how she knew that._

_“I only remember what I saw before. It’s different now.”_

_“That’s ok. This is a better world to live in,” she said, and Robin set her hand on May’s knee._

***

Melinda stared out at the little waves, breathed with them.

He’d let her bring him the O2 mask from the bedroom, had clipped the oximeter to his wrist without rolling his eyes. Phil didn’t see the point of it like she did. He’d left the door open while he rinsed off with cool water, even though it wouldn’t make a damn bit of difference to her reaction time and they both knew it. He rested his hand on her thigh while he had something to drink under the fan, talking about a movie he thought she should see. Something like that. She wasn’t really listening to the words.

He didn’t ask her not to be upset, so she didn’t have to yell at him.

After an hour or so they’d gone outside to sit in the hammock. One of his feet could reach the sand to sway them. Melinda let hers hang in the air, didn’t even protest the stupid sun hat. She sat upright next to him, their legs together, but not laying on him like she’d done before. She shouldn’t.

“I never told you about the rift.”

They hadn’t talked about the rift much, everything that energy had yanked from their heads. There hadn’t been time. Everyone had seen Lash on the monitors. Melinda hadn’t had any reason to bring it up.

“You saw something,” she said, because of course he had. He was the closest to the rift for the longest and they’d had no feed of what had happened.

“Sort of. It’s, going to sound weird.”

Melinda snorted. They were talking about a rift in space made out of rocks that read your mind. “Try me.”

“There were some apparitions from the others, a few things we’d already seen before on the monitors. But. Mostly I saw Mike Peterson telling me I never woke up.”

“Never woke up from what?” From the Framework maybe? From the future?

“From when I lost consciousness on the helicarrier deck,” he said softly.

“Like this… like all of this is some kind of hallucination? Just a dream?”

He grinned wryly. “My very own, much weirder take on Jacob’s Ladder, yup,” he said, but his hand tightened on her shoulder.

Melinda shifted over to see him better. “You’re still worried about it,” she realized.

“Not really.”

Melinda glared at him.

“I’m serious. There’s too much here. There’s too much… This. I can’t…” His voice trailed off with a helpless gesture.

“This is real. You know this is real. Why would you dream a life like _this_?”

Virtual worlds filled with Hydra. Years worth of living with people he’d never met. Stone portals to other planets. A cybernetic hand they’d left inside on the dresser. No one could dream so much detail or so much of this bullshit that fast.

He smiled. “I know. I know, trust me. I do.”

But he was shivering. She’d never seen him admit to fear. He shrugged it off, misdirected people, smiled, but his body always told her anyway.

Melinda knelt up in the wobbly hammock and cupped his jaw, kissed him gently. “This is real.” She rubbed her fingers back over his cropped hair, stubble under her thumb. “I’m real.”

He leaned back against her hands with heavy eyes, grin at the corner of his mouth. “You’re not really helping your case here.”

She huffed in disgust at his shitty joke, sat back and ended up with her head on his shoulder.

“I had so many regrets the first time. Sitting there on the deck. And I was so scared for Barton and Tahsa... And the others were up against so much. But it wasn’t so much the things I’d done going through my head but the things I hadn’t. I’ve done most of them now.”

“Like what?”

“Mentor someone and do it right, start to finish. This island. Space. Fitzsimmons. Daisy. You. I was bleeding out and we hadn’t talked in weeks and I _knew_ you were still hurting.”

Somehow she was surprised, very surprised, that he’d been thinking about her, back then in a moment like that.

Phil held her just a little tighter. “I’m not carrying so much of that now.”

***

_May didn’t glance up. There was very little May needed to say to Polly. Polly understood. All of Robin’s drawings of May were in Polly’s bag. For safekeeping, the woman had said._

_“Is there anything you need to tell me before we say bye? Anything you think I should know?” May had to ask. If there was something on Robin’s mind… She’d been quiet since the world hadn’t ended, both voice and hands. But May had been handed a drawing that could have been any little girl’s drawing, wriggly blue lines and what seemed to be a dolphin._

_“This isn’t bye yet,” Robin said._

_It was enough to almost make her smile. “Then I guess I’ll see you again sometime.”_

_May hugged her close for a moment then let the girl go._

***

“Would this be better for you if one of us left?” Phil asked quietly, sprawled on the little couch.

May’d been munching through a small pile of lychees and watching the surf, had probably thought he was sleeping, not watching her eat a snack through heavy eyes. His words made her freeze.

“I wanted to spend time with you. You know I… But, we’ve had some beautiful time, and it’s getting obvious things are going to be a little hit and miss from now on. If you need a break or if you don’t want to watch… this, I understand.”

This had never been about putting May in a position where she felt like she had to actually watch him die. He was going to die, but she didn’t have to _see_ it. Maybe it would be better to say goodbye on other terms?

But May’s eyes were blazing. She stood up so suddenly the table rattled.

“ _Better_ for me. Better for me wondering if you fell and hurt yourself. Better for me wondering if you can’t wake up and you’re going to desiccate and _suffer_ before your heart gives out. Better for me not knowing when exactly you died on the floor without me just like you’ve _already_ made me live with once. Better for me you piece of shit?”

That wasn’t really what he’d meant. “Melinda…”

“ _Don’t_. Don’t. I _can’t_ ,” she choked out through gritted teeth, backing towards the door.

“May!”

The door slammed. Phil sighed, scrubbed a hand over his face. He gave her a minute.

May was standing halfway between the house and the water, staring out over the ocean. Her fists were at her sides, so tight they looked bloodless, a faint quiver running up through her arms. Phil knew better than to try and touch her like this.

“I want to run. To go and run this off. I’m too fucking scared you’ll be gone when I get back.”

“Melinda,” he said gently.

She made a horrible little sound, closed mouth and gritted teeth.

“May. Go swim. I’m going to sit on the beach and watch. I feel fine right now. I won’t lie to you about it, I promised you that. It comes and goes.”

“Phil…”

“Go. We both know it’ll help.” His tone wasn’t as gentle that time. She didn’t need her lover right now as much as she needed the voice in her ear that’d always been there when things went bad. That was fine. That was still who they were, no matter what else they were to each other too.

May didn’t nod or turn to look at him. Her over-shirt hit the sand and she vanished into the water.

***

_Piper was hovering, orbiting behind May at a consistent eight feet distance while May gathered packages of things that should be edible together._

_“Piper,” she finally snapped, like she was ready to give a command. Piper barely managed not to snap to attention._

_Thank God she didn’t do undercover work._

_“I was just… If… Do you… need anything?”_

_May turned around and looked her over, the dark circles under her eyes, the boot scuffing at the floor. One of the last graduating classes of the Shield academies that would ever exist, one of the survivors. Someone competent, despite current nerves. “I need to know what your next move is.”_

_“Um, sorry?”_

_“Where are you going next? Most of Shield is back underground or out into space. You made stupid mistakes for the right reasons. You didn’t leave at our last two stops. You could have. So. What’s your next move?”_

_Piper frowned. “Well, we have to go get Fitz, right?”_

_Good answer. “So, I need you to help them go get Fitz.” Because I won’t be here to help, not this time._

_Piper’s crooked little grin showed up when she managed to just relax a bit. “I can do that May.”_

***

Only part of the roaring in her ears was the surf.

How could he… How dare he… How could that come out of his mouth after _everything_.

When she’d found out the first time…

But most of her knew this rage here and now was only a little bit because of Phil saying stupid shit. Most of it was all the restless energy she was burying for later, all that raw potential trying to escape. She couldn’t use it yet. The helpless rage. The pain that was coming.

There was just nowhere for all of this to go. She didn’t have enough space left.

She rolled onto her back in the ocean, let the little swells break over her face. It forced her to time her breathing, to try and get her focus back. The sun was setting behind the island, pinks and violets. She could just make out Phil taking a picture of it.

Melinda put her head under the water and screamed.

***

_It was obvious Phil and Mack had been talking a while. There were tablets on the bed. Phil looked calm. Mack looked grim._

_Mack already knew most of what they knew. They’d repeated some of the previous Shield’s mistakes, but not those. If things went right, hopefully Mack and Daisy would repeat even less. It would still be a learning curve, but maybe a little less rough than the Fall of the Triskelion._

_May shoved a tablet aside and set Phil’s dinner in his lap. He curled a finger around her thumb for a moment where Mack couldn’t see._

_Mack was still kind first. He didn’t stare, didn’t act like her taking care of Coulson was weird for someone like her._

***

They were standing near the bathroom sink with wet hair when she finally was able to look up at him, meet his eyes and take in the faint frown, the grey stubble. Phil’s face. Still so familiar.

“I didn’t know for hours,” she said. “I never thought… I always thought I would know, like I actually had some sixth sense for when you were in over your head again.

“Again?” he tried to tease, but couldn’t even manage fake-cheerful, jaw tight.

“Shut. Up. It was _hours_. It was all over in New York before Fury could call me. I didn’t sleep for days.”

Fury had told her he’d bled out, that it hadn’t taken that long, that he’d been with him. He tried to make it sound better than it was. But Tasha had gotten her the video footage before the funeral.

And Fury didn’t tell them he’d already sent Coulson’s body away to a lab and buried him there.

Phil hugged her and for the first time it wasn’t right, his left hand stiff on her back, the grip of his right arm weak.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry,” he said against her hair.

Melinda wasn’t sure which part of everything she needed him to be sorry for.

She ended up on top on him in bed, stayed there this time, fists planted on the mattress next to his head, his curled fingers against her thighs.

Melinda had the passing thought she wanted to hurt him. Wanted his blood in her teeth and his skin under her nails. Wanted to bite into him.

She wasn’t like that. She’d never been put together like that, no matter what people implied about her sometimes. There’d been much worse than ice queen said behind her back.

But this wasn’t enough. None of this was enough. She wanted something to _keep_.

Melinda shoved her face down against the swell of his bicep and wailed.

Phil of course didn’t mistake it for a pleasure sound, rolled them and tucked her into his lap on their sides, the wet heat of him between her thighs but they’d both gone still.

She kept her eyes shut tight. Even when he kissed her cheek. Even when he turned her jaw and kissed her mouth so sweetly.

“Come on sweetheart, look at me. Please?”

She didn’t look at him, but turned him carefully back onto his back.

Phil’s fist around her hair finally made her look at him. “Hey, I’m still here,” he murmured, pulling gently until she kissed him once.

Then she gently slid him back inside her.

But they were both on edge now. She couldn’t slow down. His hips rocked into hers sharp and shallow. His left hand clutched her harder than he probably meant it to.

Melinda hoped it would bruise.

When she kissed him hard and tasted copper, Melinda wanted to think it was because she’d bitten him.

Only, she hadn’t.

***

_“Are you going to come back?” Mack asked her in the hallway._

_His tone of voice said he didn’t expect her to, wouldn’t blame her if she didn’t. He’d wanted to leave before after all._

_But he wasn’t asking for the same reasons Daisy had, so it wasn’t the same answer._

_May snorted quietly. “Eventually I’ll have to.”_

***

Phil was starting to get a feeling.

He ached around the numb places today, bad, but he was ignoring it as much as he could. He’d been stiff for days, so it didn’t stand out. He’d stopped looking at his skin in the mirror days ago.

The black lines were on the back of his hand, on half of his throat.

He woke up to mid-morning sunshine again, but today he made pancakes anyways. She’d asked him for pancakes, before they came here. They turned out ok whisking with his left wrist.

May washed up for him again. Phil was looking for something on the little radio.

He remembered dancing in the kitchen, long ago. Standing on his mother’s feet or watching his parents turn circles around the table.

He found a station with music with a cheerful sway to it, not swing rhythm and not quite right for salsa, but it would do.

When he held out his hand to her she almost snarled. “Really? You’re going to make me do _that_? Here?”

As if the island somehow made it a worse request. “Just for a little bit? No one’s watching.”

“As if that makes if not suck,” May grumbled, but she took his hands anyway.

Phil kissed one because he could.

He’d never danced with her like this. There’d been similar times, playing it up for a cover, but nothing quite the same. This used to be one of those things where he’d actually had game.

He let his hands on her hips have intent, thumbs sliding along her belly and down. He leaned into it more when he stepped between her feet, let his hips roll into it as much as his back could stand.

But a lot of it was really about his hands on himself, running his palm down over his chest when he turned, the angle of his wrist when he pretended he still had enough hair to bother fixing it.

They weren’t in ballroom clothes this time, but old t-shirts in the kitchen might be better. It was more them anyways.

After half a song the glare (pout) had faded. After a song and a half he could see the change in how she was looking at him.

“This is fun, right?” he asked softly.

She only shrugged, but her bottom lip was tucked between her teeth.

Phil smiled and pulled her close. The next song they just swayed.

It rained, a heavy downpour, stronger than the usual afternoon showers that popped up in tropical places. It sounded different with the hush of the ocean, with fat droplets hitting palm leaves.

They sat on the couch and listened through the screen door, kissing for minutes at a time, May half in his lap and his arms loose around her hips.

His chest hurt. It just hurt, no matter what he did or how he moved, so letting May lay on his shoulder and balance the tablet on their legs while Alien played couldn’t make it any worse.

She was warm, and the smell of her was so familiar. It still felt like safety. 

He didn’t actually end up making anything for dinner. There were still some shrimp in the fridge, a few yams. But instead they ate bananas from the tree outside, the last of the chips, ends of baguettes badly toasted.

The biggest effort made was changing who was laying where on the couch. Phil ended up leaning on her during Aliens, head under her chin.

They’d both seen these so many times. At some point he fell asleep.

***

_Daisy was backed into a small corner of the control room with her laptop on her knees. For a moment she looked so much like Skye from years ago it was like a fist around May’s heart._

_“May? Is everything…”_

_There was a tablet in May’s hands she’d almost forgotten about. “I want to put movies on here. We won’t have internet there. This one doesn’t network at all.”_

_“Give it here,” Daisy said, pulling a cable out of a bin behind her without even looking. “What do you want? My uh, download shopping skills are still pretty good if you know what I mean.”_

_May snorted and sat down shoulder to shoulder with her like they’d done so many times. “That one. That one.”_

_May picked just over two dozen. That should be plenty for the time they… Older ones, things they’d watched half-drunk in hotel rooms. Things they’d seen in theaters when they were kids._

_It was quiet up here, the electric whirring creating its own hush, a dampening like snow._

_Daisy set her head on her shoulder and let out a shuddery exhale. May let herself set her cheek against her dark hair, felt the warmth._

_It was almost enough to lighten the weight._

***

It was pitch dark, but the air was still steamy and hot, the sand damp when they shuffled down to the water, hauling towels and the small oxygen machine.

Melinda folded her towel under her back, laid down with her feet in the surf. Phil let more of his legs be buried in the rush of the water.

The surf flowed sucking-wet around limbs, washing the ground out from under her. Hollowing a space she could fit inside.

Feeling like the earth was holding her down wasn’t unpleasant. Her brain was spinning and staring straight up into all the bright stars made it worse.

Phil was smiling up at the sky, that soft, closed-lipped smile he’d learned at some point. He hadn’t made that face yet when they’d met, but she’d always liked that smile.

“It’s not that I can’t live without you.”

Melinda hadn’t meant to say it like that, but it was true.

It was something she’d even done before, for a couple months at least. Though all she really remembered was long shifts at the Triskelion and keening face-down on the musty mats in the basement gym when it finally, finally hit her.

Phil rolled his head enough to see her, waited patiently for her to put the rest of the thought into words

“There’s an entire life in my head where I never had you in it at all. But that life sucked. And it’s been so long…” She trailed off with a vague gesture, a hand blotting out the stars. “I was a _teenager_ when we met Phil.”

“I remember,” he murmured.

“And the first time I saw you, you sassed the instructor and then you sat there with this big blue-eyed stare like you hadn’t done anything.” Melinda had been… different then. Young. She’d sat in the back of the room and giggled under her breath.

“I did? That doesn’t sound like me,” Phil teased.

“It was that basic codes class. We both already knew Morse code good enough to test out of three weeks of coursework.” Of course they had. Phil was just that kind of history nerd and her mother had taught her Morse before she was in middle school.

“Oh. I’d actually forgotten all about that.”

“Then we had basic hand to hand together, before they split up field agent and specialist tracts again.” There was a lot of overlap between the field agent hopefuls coming out of ops and communications. It was why they’d all known each other. Garrett and Fury and Blake. Others.

None of it existed anymore.

Phil snorted. “You threw me in about 3 seconds.”

“You picked me. And you said you picked me because I seemed bored. No one ever picked me because of something like that.”

Melinda got picked because she was small or female or had pissed someone off. Because people thought she’d be easy or thought she’d be a challenge. Not because someone noticed she was bored and got curious.

But that was Phil.

“And then I didn’t see you again for a month until we had that aquatics seminar thing,” she said. She couldn’t see him watching her with dark eyes in her periphery. She just couldn’t turn her head right now.

“Mmhm. We talked a bit. Somehow that turned into you balancing a cup of paint to tip all over me when I opened my locker.”

She hummed. “I could hear you squeak from outside the door.”

It was so quiet tonight, like maybe the rain had washed the rest of the island away. Like this spit of sand was all that was left.

“That all feels like as much of another life as the Framework. As the future.” It all felt so long ago, so other.  

“They keep trying to tell me reality is subjective. Something like that,” Phil said.

Melinda wasn’t sure what to think anymore. The stars almost seemed to spin.

When he reached out for her hand she held it tight.

***

_They were actually on their way, maybe 36 hours since Chicago._

_The Lighthouse was emptied of their traces and welded shut behind them best they could. The remaining Shield agents were either on-board or making their own ways home. They’d left several in Chicago, others along the way._

_Maybe Chicago would be enough to break down some of the lies stacked against them. Maybe Mack and Daisy would come back to something better. But goddamned optics had never been her job and none of those things were her problem right now._

_Phil and Daisy were sitting quietly near one of the Zephyr’s few windows. May joined them. The air between them both seemed easier this time._

_They were on the way. Beneath them the ocean yawned dark and deep like empty space._

***

He didn’t have any energy when he woke up, just nuzzled into her palm on his face and mumbled something about five more minutes.

Melinda got up, made her tea, but came back and sat on the bed to drink it. She’d pulled on his tank top to boil the water. His bare chest looked terrible in the daylight, the charcoal-black wide as her hand, on his belly and down his legs, up his throat.

He slept two more hours and woke up still drowsy, smiled at her.

She had to help him sit up.

Melinda made coffee, toasted some of the coconut bread in a pan without even really burning it. It would have to do. She listened carefully to his slow shuffling in the other room, just in case. Phil was tired again by the time he walked into the kitchen, but she didn’t make him say it.

They ate slowly at the little table. Phil took small bites, swallowed like it took effort. She wasn’t hungry anymore.

The porch swing was far enough today, his arm leaning heavy on her shoulders to get there, swaying gently in the balmy shade while the surf rushed over the beach.

Phil hadn’t bothered to put the prosthetic back on, no one around here to be startled by the implant. His right fingers played with the hemline of her dress.

She let herself trace over the new freckles on his arms while they talked.

They’d remembered how to talk about nothing after the first few days here, something that had come easy when they’d been green agents. Hours spent hiding on trains, driving on empty roads in the dark. Back then there’d always been music to argue about, Shield gossip to trade, long monologues on history that had made much better white noise for her than the radio.

Today it was Academy secrets that there was little point in keeping anymore, students they’d had but the other had never met. Where she’d been those four months out of reach of his clearance level in Asia. Things he’d seen while she was working in the Triskelion.

Phil had rolled his head back with a content sigh, done pretending to still be pissed about that time Barton had almost blown his position to shoot a wasp off her shoulder because she couldn’t risk moving.

“I think I had a crush on you when we were younger,” she said.

She could say that now. Needed to. It hadn’t been a secret. There’d just never been a reason to tell him back then, months spent apart and different lives. But, so much had changed.

Phil kissed the side of her head, lingered longer than he used to, when that gesture would have meant he’d had a few drinks, when she’d have laughed and elbowed him in the ribs.

“I did too.”

***

_Davis had landed the plane. She squeezed his bony wrist when she stood from the copilot’s seat and left without a word._

_The others were carrying things out, supplies, boxes. May avoided watching, avoided looking outside._

_Phil was tying a shoe, but had to hold his breath to do it. May pushed him back upright by the shoulder and tied the other one. “Ready for this?” she asked. A bag was packed by his feet._

_He tried to smile and didn’t. “It’s time.”_

***

“Tell me what’s next for you,” he asked in the night.

The moon had waned while they’d been here. It was darker now in the little bedroom, hard to spot the slope of her shoulder. She’d moved. He must have dozed off again.

Mel made a dismissive noise after a moment.

“I want to be able to picture it.”

“I don’t.”

“You should go home for a while. See them,” he said gently. Both her parents were still healthy for now. Her dad usually helped when she was sad. It’d be a good thing, either way. They’d been away from this earth so long.

She scoffed, curled into herself tighter.

He didn’t press her anymore, kissed her tense shoulders, curled his fingers around her hip. She’d either visit her parents soon or she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d travel awhile. Maybe something else. May still had a lot of life ahead of her, people who cared about her.

It was a comforting thought.

In a drawer buried under his slacks and the nearly-full camera were three inky pearls and a letter. Round, dark pearls with a greenish sheen when you looked for it, just the right size to suit her frame. They’d work well for stud earrings, a necklace. There were jewelers here that would do that kind of work in a metal that would keep up with her, if she lingered here for a while.

He’d written about it, for her to read. After.

Phil hadn’t bought a ring, hadn’t even considered it. Even if things had felt like that was the right move, marriage was a promise to be there. He wasn’t going to be there.

But he’d still wanted to give her _something_. Phil needed to leave her with something to hold, something tangible, something someone might see and understand… No. No one would understand. Melinda probably wouldn’t understand exactly what he’d meant by it either. He hadn’t really tried to explain. Giving them to her was enough.

She fell asleep first for once. He heard the slight shift in her breathing, how she slumped that last little bit against the bed.

Phil gingerly shifted up onto one elbow to watch her face, her open hands and the slight pout of her mouth. It felt like he’d known that expression forever.

“Start over one more time. Please Melinda. You can do it. You shouldn’t have to, but you can. You’re one of the strongest people I’ve ever known.”

It might wake her, but he still leaned forward to kiss the warm curve of her shoulder.

“I love you so much.”

***

_Daisy stopped her in the hallway with a hand on her arm. “Promise you’ll call me. Anytime. For any reason. Even if it’s to not talk at all.”_

_“Daisy, I…”_

_“Promise.”_

_May stared, something in her chest reeling._

_“I’m here for you. No matter what.” The girl swallowed hard, wet eyes and chin held high. “We’ll all still be here for you.”_

_She took the hand on her shoulder and squeezed, probably too tight, gave Daisy the nod and the promise she needed._

_May walked back to her little room in a haze. She showered by rote, finally taking the time to be thorough. To stand under the spray. Under the warm water hot tears ran over her face._

_The numb that had kept her moving was wearing off, but it wasn’t quite time for that yet._

_But later, when she’d really burnt through it, this time she might be able to pick up a phone._

***

They woke up early, too early to get out of bed, grey-pink dawn outside.

He’d rolled to hold her tight again, arm warm around her waist, a little hard against her ass.

The mask had dug in a little against her shoulder where he’d tried to nuzzle her skin.

This time she rode him slow, as close to face to face as they could get, chests brushing and her hair trailing on his shoulder.

He tried to reach for her, to plant his feet against the bed and move, but she pressed him back down with a quick shake of her head. “Mmm. Just let me.”

She knew what kind of touch he needed most now, the pace he liked and when to squeeze him. The best way to pet his arms and lick his bottom lip. All the little sounds he made.

She knew him so well.

When he gasped she curled over, cradling his face in her hands while he came.

Phil watched her push herself that last little bit over the edge with a dizzy smile like he might be dreaming.

Melinda slid forward just enough to kiss him, let him suck at the tip of her tongue, scrape gently with teeth.

She tucked her face against his shoulder to go back to sleep in the pinkish light.

***

_May poured out glasses. This should be a wake and yet wasn’t really. This should be a retirement sendoff and was really almost a wake._

_She drank when the others did, rolled the whiskey over her tongue._

_This was good scotch. It wasn’t their Haig, but it would be enough. May had plans to drink until she couldn’t taste it anymore._

_She walked out of the Zephyr with the bottle while no one was looking. It was better that way._

***

He wouldn’t wake up.

Phil was breathing steady. He moved a little. He flinched when she pinched him hard. But he wouldn’t wake up.

They’d gone to bed like usual, had sat outside after a leftovers dinner, shared a drink. They’d washed up together and stripped down to underwear.

Melinda had kissed him, smiled when his thumb stroked her jaw, helped him get the mask comfortable on his face. The canula wasn’t enough anymore.

She couldn’t sleep as much as him anymore, had lain awake listening to the surf outside and feeling the thud of his heart under her palm. Savoring it. They’d slept. They’d made love that morning. She’d woken up again snugged close along his back. The way she’d let herself get used to, despite everything.

He wouldn’t wake up. He might _not_.

She cried silently, sitting so still on the bed, letting the tears run onto her chest.

***

_The little beach house was ready for them. Two rooms and a bathroom with a big shower. Dark wood, no climate control inside, and a small porch facing the ocean. There was a porch swing. Two lounge chairs in battered white plastic. The 4-wheeler she’d rented online was behind the building._

_Inside was a boxy couch and ageing wood furniture. White walls. Boxes of dry goods and other supplies were stacked neatly on the table and small kitchen counter._

_From just inside the door it looked like vacation beach houses were probably supposed to look._

***

Phil could feel it when he woke up.

There was something distant now, maybe a little off-kilter, some lost connection between him and his limbs. It was a little like a lag, something coming unmoored, but it was a drifting kind of feeling. It wasn’t frightening.

It didn’t hurt. The only thing that hurt was Melinda’s face, her reddened eyes and tremulous frown and the way she tried to smile when he met her dark gaze.

Phil held out an arm to her, even though it felt far away. He could still feel it so warm when Mel pressed close along his side.

“Sorry,” he mumbled.

She didn’t make a sound, arm tightening around him carefully.

Phil turned his nose into her hair and let himself drift.

***

_The bedroom had two windows with screens, a wide bed, faded floral sheets already on it. Airy and bright._

_Everything medical was in there. They had painkillers, coagulants, corticosteroids. IV tubing. The bags would be in the fridge. There was an oxygen machine by the bed, extra tanks. There was morphine. There was plenty of morphine, more than enough if he…_

_Simmons had thought of everything. Of course she had._

_May heard the faint thud when Phil dropped his bag on the porch._

_She brought it inside. They were here now._

***

They spent the rest of the day right there, in the sunny little bedroom with the windows wide open.

They had tea. Kissed for a while. Talked about nothing. Things they’d seen here that had been pretty. The good moments of this trip.

There were shells on the little dresser, a few broken pieces of coral.

He drifted some, losing halves of sentences, switching the days they were talking about.

Melinda pretended not to notice.

It was tempting to imagine burning this place down behind them. Behind her. After. Vanish into the world, change her name. Buy a plane, work somewhere remote enough to be off the grid. Die at some point. Nat could find her, and she had to begrudgingly admit her mother could as well, but probably no one else. Maria was too smart. Fury wouldn’t dare.

But this was someone’s income, not their pyre. She couldn’t burn it.

And she couldn’t do that to Dad. She could never do that to Daisy. She couldn’t vanish.

It wasn’t an option. But she did picture it.

Mostly she played with his thin hair while he rambled through different part of the forbidden senior thesis he’d always meant to turn into a book. She’d heard most of it before, but not for a long time.

It was smart, all the bits he’d pulled together and gotten the right picture even with most of his sources redacted, finding where the overlap was and wasn’t for the wartime propaganda version of that particular commando team.

They’d never had time to do this, just lay somewhere and let him talk for hours, for him to let her talk as much or as little as she wanted because it never bothered him which one she did. They’d always been in a car or stuck on a plane or holed up in a safe house ready to run when they had these talks. Even at the Academy it’d never really been like this, always exams or early drills or Garrett and Blake around.

When it got hot they took a shower. The beach was too far now. The porch was too far now. She brought one of the kitchen chairs in so he could sit. His arm was heavy on her shoulders when they shuffled to it, heavier getting back.

He still wouldn’t try eating anything, but she got them juice, better than nothing.

His right hand shook when he tried to lift the cup. She steadied it, drank the rest when he shook his head next time he tried to swallow.

He was looking up at her soft eyed, like he’d done when he’d knelt to her on the beach just days ago.

It ached.

Phil leant forward and rested his face against her diaphragm, prickly cheek on the thin skin, no bones between him and her heart and lungs. The ones that still worked. The ones she’d trade in a moment if life worked more efficiently.

Phil sighed quietly. His arm wrapped sluggishly around her hips.

Melinda pressed her hand gently over his other ear so all he could hear was the rawest parts of her.

Then she said, “I love you.”

***

_Phil was standing on the beach, facing out at the bright water. Loose in his shoulders and sand on his dark shoes._

_Melinda let out a heavy breath, put her sunglasses on, and walked outside._

***

Melinda could see on his face that Phil already knew he wasn’t getting up again.

He’d insisted on a tank-top and soft shorts after they’d rinsed off and it wasn’t because he was cold. It was so she didn’t have to dress him later.

She’d helped him get the mask back on, tugged his shoulders into her lap.

He smiled up at her, mumbled _love you_ , the sound only muffled a little bit by the plastic. Phil dozed off with his forehead against her thigh.

She tried to keep the kind of focus she’d learned from long-haul flying, watching everything and nothing. Hearing that little sentence ring in her head and not focusing on it too much. Not yet.

It was dark before he moved again, seemed to wake up a little.

Phil rasped, “Go back to sleep,” like it was any other night, as if one of them had dreamed.

But she hadn’t moved. Her hand was still on his chest. Her legs had fallen asleep an hour ago.

After another hour she thought she heard Quinjet engines outside, that distant thrum.

Her awareness of the surf sounds came and went. That was normal at least, white noise and then a point of focus again when the wind or tide changed. His breathing stayed shallow.

Melinda sat stiff upright in the dark. Those _were_ Quinjet engines outside.

They wouldn’t waste time coming back here if they hadn’t found him. If they’d found Fitz sleeping…

There was a cryotube on the Zephyr. Not alien. Not invasive. Just a pause. Just some more time.

“What is it?” Phil slurred.

Harsh light poured in the bedroom door.

All he had to do was say yes, was sleep for a while. She could keep watch. They’d done that so many times. They could do it one more. She could wait. He’d always been older than her anyway. Maybe it was her turn.

Melinda bent forward to kiss his face, let herself really see it again, see him, hands shaking from the control it took not to laugh or cry.

“Option three.”

 


End file.
